


No Big Deal Part II

by Dasha (Dasha_mte), Dasha_mte



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-07
Updated: 2011-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-15 11:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/160533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dasha_mte/pseuds/Dasha_mte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pretty much everything revisited</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Big Deal Part II

This story is a sequel to: No Big Deal Part I

* * *

* * *

 _I'm in charge of putting together a special security detail for the mayor's appearance. He's requested you personally._

* * *

By the end of February things were warming rapidly. Crocuses were blooming. Trees were budding. The grass was greenish instead of a flat, dead yellow or  
brown. Crime picked up a bit--the cold weather had put a damper on the more elective crimes (who wants to stand out in the snow for hours at a time peddling grass? B&E is rough when you're slipping on ice and trying not to break your leg) and the warm weather was bringing the crooks out of hibernation as quickly as the flowers.

Joel came up with the idea of starting a little syndicate and sponsoring the racehorse Simon's uncle left him. Enchanted with the glamorous world of horse-racing, a bunch of guys from the bullpen jumped on the bandwagon. They pushed me to join, but I ducked and ran; betting on helpless animals--and the kind of dirty tricks the professionals played on those animals to make sure the bets went their way--turned my stomach. I tried to be polite but, frankly, I wanted nothing to do with any of it. They did talk me into coming down and looking at the horse at lunchtime the day before the racing season opened. I was pleasantly surprised. Lastings Park had been cleaned up and remodeled quite a bit since I had worked vice five or six years ago. The paint on most of the new construction was barely dry. It looked almost...family oriented. A place you might go for fun, instead of a place you went because you had a gambling addiction or were a loan shark looking for a place to hang out.

In pursuit of the new image thing, the track owner was letting the PD use the club area for some police benefit. I'd been planning to dodge the whole event, but Simon ambushed me at the last minute and assigned me to a security detail. At first I thought Blair was being a very good sport by coming along--show of solidarity and all that. Then I thought he was just using it as an excuse to pick up girls while wearing a tux (and since this was a PD event, it sure as hell better _just_ be girls). But no. I was giving them both too much credit.

And somehow, not enough. They pulled one over on me. Simon actually lied to my face, and I bought it and Blair--well, no, he didn't actually _say_ anything, but he'd stood there calmly while I had the wool pulled over my eyes and gave nothing away. Nothing. The innocent little shit.

Before I could even digest the fact that I'd been had, let alone figure out what _for_ , the mayor made a public spectacle of me by announcing that I was going  
to get an award at some sort of public recognition dinner two weeks from Saturday. An award. Like I was some kind of brown-nosing, heroic, model of civic--something-or-other. Like I was the kind of person that looked good for the urban/county government. Like an award was what told a person if he was doing his job all right--as if the people giving the award had any idea what the job even _was_.

But the whole time I was up front making my polite 'thank you,' Simon was looking on with pride and satisfaction and Blair--

Blair was shining with admiration and excitement and a certain smugness at having set me up.

 _They_ knew what the job was. Something in me softened, although I had no intention of letting either of them off the hook. If they thought they could start pushing me around, they had a surprise coming. Before I could start getting some of my own back, though, a murder took place on a balcony two floors up, and when the body came flashing past the window, and well, that pretty much ended the party.

The evening's excitement was just beginning.

It wasn't too hard to find the balcony the man had come from, although the only clues were a few scuff marks and a slight warm spot on one of the railings. I taped it off for forensics and headed back down to the courtyard where the body had landed. Simon had taken control of the scene, and Brown and Rafe, who had followed us out, were handling crowd control.

"I think he was pushed," I said.

Simon winced. "Do you have any evidence to back that up?"

"They were right above my head, Simon. I heard what sounded like a struggle--some muffled sounds, maybe somebody trying to yell." Not enough to give me any idea of who or why or if there was anything special about the how. The senses weren't being a lot of help.

"You find anything up there?"

"Nothing conclusive. Just some possible scuff marks. I know what I heard, though, Simon."

"This is just great. Can you imagine the field day the tabloids are gonna have with this? Track owner murdered at a party hosted by some of the highest-ranking members of Cascade P.D."

Right. It was somebody on the premises. Someone who probably walked right past all of us. I looked out over the crowd of dignitaries and trophy wives milling and gossiping, trying to get a look at the body. Cops were already going around taking down the names and addresses of the people here, but it was a big facility with a dozen exits; the killer could have slipped out with no problem, and even if he or she was still here--how hard would it be to seem to have an alibi for that exact second? This one was going to be a real pain in the butt--

I froze, staring at a familiar face among the well-dressed civil servants and business elite. Older--my God, so much older. And beautiful. Grown up. You never expected--

"Not to mention the mayor, city council... look. Do me a favor. Keep a lid on this until you can bring me something concrete," Simon was saying.

He met my eyes; he'd seen me. If I walked away now, it would look like backing down. I desperately wanted to back down, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. I took a deep breath to brace myself and mumbled something at Simon.

Stephen aborted a smile, steeled himself and came forward. "Jim!"

Well. The best defense was a good offense. I met him. "Stephen." I wanted to hug him. Or hit him. I wanted to disappear.

He looked at me guardedly. "It's amazing how two guys can live in the same town and never run into each other."

"Yeah. And suddenly the world gets very small." Practically claustrophobic. I hoped I was sounding casual. "You were at the party?" I hadn't seen him.

"I work here. Our company has a long-term lease on the property."

The woman he was with stepped up and held out her hand. "We take care of all the maintenance and track operations in exchange for exclusive rights to the races here. Ben got a percentage of the gate and concessions." Her eyes strayed past me to the body. "Pat Reynolds."

"Jim Ellison. We'll be in touch." I turned away, not hurrying, but just businesslike and disinterested. Like I had important things on my mind: a body, for example. That had to be more important than any old, petty, family crap. Yeah.

But I fled. I collected Sandburg, grunted something polite to Rafe and Brown--and ran.

"Who was that guy?" Blair asked.

"My brother," I said shortly, hoping he wouldn't pry, knowing he would.

"You never told me you had a brother."

"There's nothing to tell."

"What do you mean there's nothing to tell, Jim? I mean, your sentinel abilities could be hereditary. What if he's got it too?"

My God, what a thought. Someone else in the world like me! But no, not Stephen. Even after everything, I didn't hate him enough to wish these senses on my baby brother. "All right. We'll pack him up and ship him off to Peru for eighteen months, see what happens."

"Well, you know, I could apply for a grant."

I waited for more, but he dropped it after that. He didn't push me on the way to the car or when we got home. I found myself floating in a weird, lonely regret--sorry that Stephen had been born my brother and not Blair.

The next day was Saturday. We stopped by forensics in the morning, then headed out to meet Simon at the track. Little Stogie was running. I would have given it a miss, but it gave me an excuse to take another look around Lastings Park without being particularly obvious about it. Blair, ever loyal, decided to help us blend in by betting on the ponies.

It turned out the image Serena reclaimed from the surveillance camera was Stephen. Never, not in my wildest dreams, would I have imagined that my baby brother would be involved in something like this. I wondered if that made me naive. I wondered if it were somehow my fault. I wondered if I was a bad cop, because I kept hoping that somehow it was all a mistake, and Stephen wouldn't really...hadn't really....

I went to see him. He was in his office. He was surprised to see me, stumbling to his feet, opening his mouth to speak and then fumbling back down again.

"Why didn't you tell us you saw Prince last night?" I demanded.

He flinched at the question, or maybe my tone, and disappointment and confusion flickered over his face. "I see him almost every day."

"Last night was a little different, don't you think?"

"Well--yeah, but--I didn't actually talk to him. The last conversation I had was about four o'clock in the afternoon. I couldn't have said anything about his state of mind."

The innocent and confused act was beginning to turn my stomach. "You were on the office balcony right after Ben Prince fell to his death. I just want to know why you didn't come forward. Stephen, you were seen on the surveillance camera for God's sake."

"What difference does it make? Ben committed suicide."

"I think Ben Prince was murdered."

"That's ridiculous. He was old and sick and angry and he had lost control of his track. It's the only thing he ever cared about." He stopped, surprised again. "Are you accusing me of something here, Jim?"

"What were you doing on that balcony?" I realized I was hoping he had some good explanation, or maybe a witness who saw him _not_ push Ben Prince to his death.

I was hoping very hard.

"Ben was threatening to file a lawsuit against the company. I saw him go up there, I went after him. I figured maybe I could talk him out of filing the lawsuit. But when I got outside, he was gone."

"And you didn't see anybody else?"

"No, and now that he's dead, I feel real guilty about pushing his buttons."

He didn't sound guilty. Agitated, sure, but I didn't think he was lying. I didn't think so. He didn't sound too glib or too defensive, but he didn't have an alibi, either, and that pissed me off. He met my eyes without flinching, as though he were waiting for me to say something, to give him a lead to follow. He'd looked at me that way when we were kids, when I was his big brother and he was my responsibility. Something in me hurt, and I pushed it ruthlessly aside. "You sure that's all you pushed?"

"Oh, this is great. I run into my big brother for the first time in years and he accuses me of murder." Disappointment. Hurt. Anger, finally.

He was being very convincing. I couldn't risk believing him. With my luck he was guilty, and I was going to have to arrest him. "What would you like me to believe, Stephen, huh? You were the last one to see Ben alive. In my book, you're a prime suspect."

His eyes hardened. "'Cop of the year.' Just how many heads did you have to bust to get that little honor, bro?"

"You just keep available for questioning. I'll be in touch."

I found Blair down at the betting windows before I realized I was looking for him. Turns out I was just in time to get a perfect view of one of the support columns splitting open and spitting out a dead body like the climax of some convoluted Greek play. 'Behold, the secret sin is at last revealed,' and all that. Very melodramatic. Lastings Park had two dead bodies in less than twenty-four hours. At this rate, they could change the crime statistics for the whole city in less than a week.

Aw, damn. Stevie, are you involved in this?

I had to tell Simon about Stephen. Simon thought--I don't know what he thought. That I was losing it, possibly. He sent me home, and on the way Blair started to nag me about talking about it. What was the deal with Stephen?

So, finally, I told him the whole story. Nothing special--just the usual petty intrigue and backstabbing and manipulations you normally see in American families. Certainly I had seen worse as a cop. Much worse. Pop had never been above corporal punishment, but he'd never beaten us bloody, either. He'd probably meant well. He'd be embarrassed if he knew I'd noticed that he'd never once said he was proud of either one of us, never once said he'd loved us. He'd tried to raise us to be stronger than that.

I don't know what I'd hoped for from Sandburg. That he'd say Stephen had lived his own life and made his own choices and if I had to arrest him, it wasn't my fault? That it was likely Stephen was just evil, and I'd just have to learn to live with it? That no matter what mind games were being played, Blair himself would never have let himself be manipulated into hating me?

Whatever I was hoping, I was disappointed. Of course. Blair was frustratingly reasonable. He suggested I try to see things from Stephen's point of view, that I remember that kids make mistakes when they're hurt or scared, that people can change. He was no help at all.

About that time Stephen called to say he needed to see me; he'd uncovered evidence implicating himself in the murders. "Oh? Then why aren't you calling your lawyer?" I asked. I wondered if he was expecting me to cut him a break because of our genetic relationship. I wondered if he were playing some other kind of game.

"Come on, man. It's all a lie. Look, I'm at the track--" He talked me into going down and meeting him in the garage. Well, why not? Just end it and get it over with.

When I got there, half the lights were out and Stephen was nowhere to be seen. I could hear two people, though; one in a car parked at the end of a row, and another behind it. Trying to penetrate the deep shadows, I walked forward firmly and called, "Stephen?" since there was no point in being discreet. The two people had to have noticed me.

The lights on the occupied car came on just as I passed in front of it. The painful and blinding light was joined by the thunder of gunfire. In the enclosed space the sound echoed, but I felt the shock waves against my skin. The person behind the car was firing. Ducking and skittering, I pulled my weapon and fired, taking out the headlights that made me a target and then trying for the figure behind the car.

Abruptly the firing stopped, leaving my ears ringing. I dove for the car, tearing open the door, prepared to--

It was my brother, lying across the seats, his eyes open but unfocused and blood running down the side of his head. He was covered in broken glass from the windshield. Without thinking, I pulled him up and put my gun away. "Stephen?"

He looked at me in confusion and fear. "Jim?"

"What the hell's going on here?"

"I'm not sure." The blood was from a crease above his temple. Shit--from my gun? Did I nearly kill him?

I nearly killed him.

Had someone set him up so I would kill him?

Fearfully, my hand hovered above the wound. "You hit anywhere else?"

"No, I don't think so."

I called for an ambulance. I didn't know what else to do. It was bleeding heavily, but I didn't dare put pressure on it--if I'd cracked his skull--

I forced myself to look away from that terrible, bleeding cut and found myself staring at a gun barrel poking out of the shadows. The gun fired, breaking the air as it sliced past my shoulder. I fired back, blindly, my ears still ringing too much to find a target with my hearing. "Hold it! Police!" I shoved Stephen down and back, as far out of the line of fire as I could, and started after the assailant.

All I found was Simon's horse trainer standing in the middle of the first floor garage, complaining that someone had stolen his car.

I followed the ambulance to the hospital and called Sandburg so he'd know where I was and not worry. I told him there was no need to come down. He didn't listen. By the time the doctor came out to tell me my 'witness' just needed a few stitches, Blair was standing next to me as silent and solid as a rock. He had one hand on my arm and the other braced on the back of a chair.

He didn't ask me any questions, but I told him anyway, finishing with, "Those first shots--I don't see how anybody could have missed me. So it looks like somebody set him up to be killed by a cop while carrying a boatload of incriminating evidence."

"It looks like?" Sandburg repeated. "Looks like? So--what? You think he set all this up, made himself a target while you _shot at_ him so you would decide the evidence was faked?"

"He knows I wouldn't shoot him." But was that thought even true?

"Right. Right. Did you know who was in the car?" I shrugged, unsure. "Is there any possibility you would have known if you had been anyone else?"

"No," I murmured, and then, louder, "No."

"So? Do you think--?"

"No," I admitted, "I don't. I don't think he did."

The hospital wanted to keep Stephen overnight. I put a guard on his door and Blair and I went home. The next morning, when the doctors let him go, I checked him out and took him home to shower and change.

Stephen had a small townhouse in a fashionable new complex. The furniture was sleek and modern and smelled like a professional cleaning service had been through recently. He gestured at the couch. "Make yourself at home. You can make some coffee in the kitchen. I'll hurry."

Not knowing what else to do, I made the coffee. His dishes were black and oblong, instead of white and round. The handles on the coffee mugs all had elegant little swoops. The coffee was excellent.

In ten minutes he came out combing his hair and carrying his shoes. "Everything OK?"

I shrugged. "Fine. So. Live here alone?"

"Yeah. Got divorced a couple of years ago."

"Ah. Sorry."

He shrugged. "You know how it is."

"Yeah, actually." We looked at each other, surprised to find we had something in common.

Stephen looked away first. He picked up a small framed picture sitting on a table and passed it to me. "Haley. She just turned five. I get custody one weekend a month and three weeks in the summer." He met my eyes as he said that, and I winced in sympathy.

The girl in the picture was beautiful--curly dark hair, wide blue eyes. "She's beautiful," I said. There was a lump in my throat. I tore my eyes away. "Ready to go?"

At the station he showed me the evidence against him. He'd done a pretty thorough job of collecting it. Unfortunately, somebody had also done a pretty good job of faking it. He was in real trouble.

In the end, the best plan we could think of was to use Simon's horse trainer (who had seen the second man at the garage) as bait to draw him out. We had to wait two days for Little Stogie to run again. In the meantime, we kept Herman under guard and Stephen hid out in a hotel out of town.

It very nearly didn't work. The materials substituted for the renovation weren't up to code, and the entire grandstand started to go, endangering thousands of people. Stephen's nemesis, Pat Reynolds, shot the cheap hit-man she'd hired to do her dirty work and escaped into the amusement park next door. It was close, but I got her.

We spent the next two weeks sorting evidence and questioning witnesses and fighting with lawyers. Stephen got off the list of suspects and got an apology and his job back. The scandal over the race track took over the evening news--somebody had paid off the inspectors, which made for a juicy story. The entire upper grandstand had to be closed again pending another remodeling, but races were running again by the beginning of the next week.

I called him on Friday to invite him to the civic recognition banquet on Saturday. It was a terrible party. Everybody went, and none of us cared about the rubber chicken or dry potatoes. Sandburg brought a date who abandoned him half-way through the meal (I had no idea why, and didn't want to know. Sandburg's love life was a frightening and depressing thing, and I wanted to stay out of it), so he wound up at loose ends, and partying with Simon, Herman, and the cigar club.

The Hyatt where they held the dinner was just on the other side of the amusement park from the race track, and after the party ended the boys wanted to go down and say hello to Little Stogie. We were all a little drunk. The night was warm and clear and smelled like spring. Sometimes, when the cigar club paused in their singing, I could actually hear the crickets chirping in the trees behind the rollercoaster.

I'd been wanting--oh, for days--to say so many things to Stephen. Unfortunately, I'd had no idea what those things were. Blair said just to start talking and tell him a few things at a time that were important and true. Easy for him to say! Blair wasn't afraid of anything. For a while I'd thought that maybe my relationship with Blair would give me some hints on how to handle Stephen; the only thing even close to a brother I'd ever had as an adult besides Sandburg was Danny Choi. But there was no help there - somehow what I felt for Blair wasn't anything at all like what I felt for Stephen.

In the end I screwed it up. I didn't know how to apologize. Nothing I could say could put back the years that stretched between us. I looked into his eyes, and didn't really know him, couldn't even think of something to say that would make him know me. I stumbled around, and Stephen--

Didn't hate me. Wasn't angry. Had been _sorry_ all this time.

We all went out and got thoroughly drunk.

* * *

 _Why don't we just let her stay here tonight until we figure out what to do with her?_

 _Chief, we don't know anything about this girl. She could be a doper, have outstanding warrants. She might need medication._

 _Jim, come on, take a look. How dangerous could she be?_

 _Sandburg, I thought I asked you to keep her off the furniture._

* * *

Leave it to Sandburg to head off to a movie and come back twenty minutes later with an escapee from a mental hospital whom he'd fished out of a dumpster. He collected strays; this was not a surprise. Look at me. He'd kept me for two years already. I was just lucky he'd never come home with a pregnant cat or a three-legged dog or whatever.

Oh, yes. Leave it to Sandburg to bring home an escaped mental patient whom people were trying to abduct at gunpoint. But she was a nice kid, absolutely sweet and innocent, trapped in something that had nothing really to do with her and should never have touched her at all. After we solved her little problem, we kept her for three weeks before having to let her go to a rehabilitation school in Oregon. By that time it was--for the best, I know--but hard.

Spring was warm and beautiful with hardly any rain at all. It was a nice night in the first part of May when my senses totally screwed me over.

I was alone; Sandburg was at home grading papers and I had been staying late for a meeting with Simon, the Coast Guard, and assorted feds; Ben Crilly was coming up for trial and they wanted to go over my report again. While I was driving home a call came in on a department store break-in. I was less than a block away. I took the call.

The perpetrators were armed. They resisted arrest. Locating them with my hearing, I neutralized the threat. There was a perfume spill. I focused down, the way Blair had taught me, ignoring the overwhelming stench, the burning in my throat....

The gunfire messed up my hearing a little, but my vision was fine. There was another gun, and I zeroed in on it, zoning on the smooth metal, the darkness in the barrel. I didn't look past the gun, I just took out the threat.

It was a security guard. If he hadn't been wearing a vest, my shot would have killed him.

Blair wouldn't blame me, of course. He was being reasonable. Or maybe he was too blinded by his feelings for me to _be_ reasonable. As much as he knows, as much as he understands...he just doesn't understand the parts of me that stop _thinking_ when I'm zoned. Those moments I'm so totally consumed with paying attention to one thing that the other senses don't pass anything along and I'm vulnerable, yes, he gets that. Those few terrible moments when there is just too much to process, and I can't make sense of it or stop listening or smelling, he seems to get that, too. But even before things get to that point....

The army training slips me into search and destroy mode so easily, and the senses ignore everything except what might be a threat....Anyone alive in that store could have been interpreted as my enemy. If it had been a cleaning woman or a manager staying late, they would have been dead. I would have killed them, never even considering they might not be an innocent.

But wait. Things were getting worse. While I was beating myself up over that, a Chopec war party was arriving in Cascade intending to abduct the management of Cyclops Oil in order to take them back to Peru for trial for environmental crimes.

Other South American Indians, when they want to fight the destruction of their villages or hunting territory or culture or rubber trees, learn to play international politics. They learn to speak Spanish or Portuguese or English. They go to the city and protest the government. They send a spokesman to the press. They align themselves with international conservation groups.

Not the Chopec. Although they did make educational forays into the dominant society and learned about everybody else's rules when a rare opportunity presented itself, they refused to give any ground or play by those rules. No doubt it would get them all killed sooner or later.

It got Incacha killed. He died in my living room, bleeding out and panting with pain and nobody to help us but Blair.

I...guess I kind of lost it after that. It was Sandburg who held things together, who faced me in the right direction and dragged me forward until I could do what needed to be done. We'd lost Incacha, but the rest of the tribe was still out there, at war with Yeager in the streets of Cascade. It had to be stopped. First they had to be found.

So I took the senses back and I did what had to be done, and if it was too late for Incacha, it wasn't too late for the others. We got in between them and managed to even the odds. Not that they had needed _much_ evening; despite the fact that Yeager was using modern weapons it was a near thing.

They wanted to take Yeager, but I had captured him. My prisoner, my justice.

The DA threw the book at him. The environmental crimes in Peru were all over the news for days and Cyclops Oil stock plummeted. Blair called Sam who got someone out to clean the mess out of the loft--forensics people know all about cleaning up blood. The Chopec disappeared silently and completely. Home, I assume. Simon noted the totaled Exhibition without making any jokes; I suppose it doesn't count if I'm not actually driving a vehicle when it gets demolished....

All's well that ends well. Right?

The next few days dragged by and I sort of sleepwalked through them. Blair was vividly available. Even for him. Every time I turned around, he was silently, gently, _not_ watching me. He wanted me to process or something. But he didn't say anything for the first four days. Then, on Monday night, he cornered me in the living room.

"It's not good to bottle this stuff up. Talk about it. Spend the day at the gym. Go out and get drunk. Here, I'll take you. We'll go to Flatly's and get totally smashed."

"Blair, I appreciate what you're trying to do here." I did; he'd shown remarkable self-control to have waited so long. "But I'm doing fine."

"You're not fine. You're not eating. You're not talking....Keeping this stuff inside isn't good for you, man."

"You're not eating either."

He winced at that. I knew he was waking up at night, crying a little for Janet. He'd gotten her into the mess, and I could smell his guilt and sadness that it had gotten her killed. He sighed. "You did this when Danny died. It's not healthy."

"So? What do I do? Talk about it? Talking about it isn't going to change anything."

"It will help you work through your feelings--"

"The reason for my feelings will still--"

A knock at the door interrupted us. I stalked over to the window and turned my back to the door, leaving Sandburg to answer it.

It was Stephen. He was coming over for dinner. I'd forgotten.

Damn.

Blair was confused and inarticulate at the door. Stephen asked him if something was wrong. The silence stretched out until Blair sighed and said, "Yeah. It's been...a rough week." Another pause. "You know the Cyclops Oil mess?"

"It was on the news. Some kind of fight downtown and an...Indian attack? It all seemed pretty far-fetched, actually. Wait. That was--that was you? Jim?"

"Yeah. That was us. The, um, Indians were native Peruvians. People Jim knew from before. One of them got killed."

"Oh, my God. You're kidding." A short silence which I imagined Stephen used to stare at me. "Is he all right? Look, I'm just gonna--I mean, I should say something. Then I'll get out of your hair, OK?"

"Sure. That would be great." Blair withdrew into his room, the door shutting with a soft click.

Leaving me alone with Stephen. There was a long silence. Finally, he took a few steps forward. "Jim, I can't...I can't imagine. I'm so sorry." He came closer, almost touching me. "Don't worry about dinner. Obviously. I'm sure you'd like to be left alone for a while. Just--I, um. I'm sorry."

He turned to go. My throat was too knotted to speak, but my hand shot out and snared his wrist. "Jimmy?" he whispered worriedly. I shook my head. Don't go, I wanted to say. Don't think I don't want you here. But I didn't dare open my mouth.

After a moment, he stepped closer and placed his free hand on my shoulder. He didn't know what to do with me. I could smell his worry, and under that, guilt. Ah. Right. He blamed himself for me running away from home, didn't he? And everything that happened to me after that. I took a deep breath, watching a seagull in the distance drop toward the bay diving for a fish. It fell like a star, its eyes bright and eager.

"Listen, Stephen. Can we take a...rain check on tonight?"

He swallowed. "Sure. Any time. You know that."

"Thanks. I'll call you in a couple of days." I forced myself to glance back, and he smiled a little.

I stood thinking until I heard the elevator let him out on the ground floor, then sighed and headed over to Blair's room. "Chief?" I knocked.

The door opened. "Yeah? Where's Stephen?"

"Gone. Home, I guess."

"Oh." He tried to cover his disappointment.

"Listen, Chief. Want to go for a walk?"

"Oh! Yeah, sure. Let me get my jacket."

So we went out. The sun was just setting, and it was cloudy and cool. He shivered occasionally, before we got warmed up from the exercise. We didn't talk, just walked. We smelled the air, watched the people.

We did the same thing the next night, and the next, and things got a little better.

The days marched on. I went to work. Sandburg gave his final. We took a long weekend and headed up to St. Sebastian's. The only thing that really made me feel better, though, was that more and more crap kept coming up about Cyclops Oil in the news. The "sad plight" of Indians in South America was getting a lot of publicity, and NGO's were starting to get involved on an international level.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job of seeming normal, but Blair wasn't dating and Simon kept taking me to lunch and trying to start casual conversations. I think inviting us along to watch a Jags practice had to have been pity-motivated. Urging us to go without him when he and Darryl had to cancel surely was.

Simon probably would have given us the case when Burke was shot even if we hadn't just met the team. I'd been Simon's pit bull back before the senses came on line (when I also became his bloodhound) and now that I was Detective of the Year besides, I looked good for the brass. Politics. Whatever.

It was a good case--the kind that reminded me why, deep down, I loved my job. The pressure on, the press watching, some perp pulling nasty shit and thinking he was too smart to ever be caught. But it was only a matter of time, and I meant to make that a short time.

Sandburg certainly enjoyed himself. Although he appreciated talent of any kind, he had a real thing for sports. Throughout the whole case he walked around in stunned joy at having met Orvelle Wallace. Apparently a childhood hero of his. It was kind of endearing, how little it took to make him really happy.

Although--I admit that Orvelle Wallace was a pretty big deal. And we played a pick-up game with Dwight Roshman. Blair thought it would get him to loosen up, maybe give us something we could use. I had no such hopes, but I figured the chance to watch him up close and feel out his mood might tell me something. The odd thing was, the whole time we were playing, I wasn't thinking about the case. Or even about the once in a lifetime chance to play against a pro. I was thinking about Blair. It was weird. Each time I brushed up against him, it was almost like a sensory spike, except not painful, just...strong. I could feel his muscles and bones under his clothing, the smell of his hair, the way the light struck his skin. I had no idea what it meant, if it meant anything at all. It might have been a sentinel thing, or...well, I didn't know what it might have been. It just didn't make any sense.

Halfway through the game Blair pulled me aside, explaining that if we didn't put on a better performance, Roshman was going to totally lose interest. He wanted me to use some sentinel tricks--which seemed almost like cheating, although I couldn't put my finger on why. As Blair had pointed out, more than once, making the most of one's natural abilities was considered a virtue in our culture. Roshman wasn't cheating by being tall.

Once I started, though, I really enjoyed it. Roshman's surprise when I nailed the basket from halfway down the court was sweet, but Blair's appreciation was sweeter. I began playing to him, reaching for more and more difficult shots. Before things went too much further, though, the backboard gave way--a reminder that this gambit hadn't made us any damn progress on the case.

Which, really, wasn't going anywhere.

Blair--he's so smart, but sometimes he just doesn't think! He was so wrapped up in the whole Orvelle Wallace thing, and anyway, he never wanted to think badly of anybody. This time it got away from him--he withheld information, he took dangerous chances.

Yeah, none of it was really a surprise, but....

It was...funny, up to a point. It got to be irritating--panting after cheerleaders, grinning cheezily at Orvelle, whining about his car, pursuing his own--get this, his _own_ \--line of investigation. To top it all off, in the end he was right. Which meant I couldn't even yell at him for informally interviewing a mob guy or taking the side of the prime suspect.

Not that there was anything, really, to get mad at: it wasn't like I'd _wanted_ "O" Wallace to be guilty. I caught the bad guy and rescued the innocent lady and the Jags even won the game. Another high profile case on my record, and an official commendation. Another hood who didn't get away. There was no way to look at the thing that gave me any excuse to be...irritated.

I was still irritated a couple of weeks later when I ran a background check on Sandburg's date. Or maybe it was a sentinel-territorial thing, like getting upset when Blair leaves dirty clothes in the living room or wants to drive my truck. Sandburg firmly believed I did it because I was annoyed at being introduced as road crew, and called me "classist" despite the fact that I was right. Simon and Joel just thought I was way too nosy and over-protective. Also despite the fact that I was right.

The truth is I wasn't nearly protective enough. I ran a check on Iris because she looked familiar, not because I was petty enough to be mad that he blew off a stakeout for his date with her. Then, when I had the proof in my hand that the little unwashed tramp was a petty crook and a suspected drug runner, I shrugged and said, "What can happen in one night?"

In the wee hours of the next morning, when I got back to the station and found out that Iris, an unknown man, and Blair's car had been involved in a shooting at a convenience store and that Blair couldn't be located, I kind of lost it.

I frantically searched Cascade and the outlying suburbs, tearing from one possible lead to another with Simon trailing nervously behind. In the moments in between leads, when there was no destination to race to, a kind of acid horror would rise up in me, reminding me that I had been having a great time with Simon and Joel while Blair was being kidnapped by his date and her armed companion. They could already have dumped his body. I knew how these things went down--

Then I would want to kill him myself. If he had had a measurable amount of common sense or self-preservation, I would have been at home asleep and not giving myself an ulcer worrying about him. But no. He never stopped to think. He was never careful. He was so anxious to get into the pants of a girl he fished out of a car trunk that he didn't even bother to ask her last name. He _never_ bothered to stop and think about things like that. Apparently his dick was such an overwhelming force that he'd sleep with any gun-toting maniac in this city but me. Which I would probably find insulting if I spent any time thinking about it. In two years the most I'd ever inspired was a pleased, appraising look.

But I didn't have time. I might never have time to be annoyed by Sandburg again.

They could already have dumped the body somewhere.

When he finally pulled around the train station that afternoon, grinning like nothing at all had happened, like everything was just a big joke, I went completely over the edge.

I read Sandburg his rights and pretended to book him for possession, stopping just short of the strip search. Simon, who had also spent the day tearing around the city and had to be feeling like a frantic parent, was sympathetic to my relieved fury, but made me put Blair in his office rather than in lock-up. "Jim, come on. The kid's been through enough--"

"He's not a kid, damn it, Simon. He can't keep pulling stupid shit like this or he isn't going to get any older. He can't--" He can't do this to me. I can't lose him. "There could have been consequences."

It took me a few hours to calm down and let him out. I told him Iris had confessed and rolled over on the others, which was true. I asked him if he was all right. I wished I could have begged him to be careful. I wished I could have begged him to think, next time. I wished I could have told him that it wasn't worth it, not his life for a little fun and warmth that didn't mean anything to him. But I didn't know how to beg, and I didn't know how to name what he meant to me.

* * *

 _All right, my little guppy, ready for your first fly casting lesson?_

* * *

I was digging in the cooler trying to decide if we had enough ice to keep the mayonnaise in the sandwiches from turning when the breeze blew a soft cloud of Sandburg's musk over me. I automatically looked up to see what had caught his attention, but there was no one around but Simon and me. When Sandburg noticed I was looking at him, he frowned briefly and then reddened, wincing. He swallowed.

Nonchalantly, I carried the cooler back to the truck and lifted it into the bed. Then I leaned past Sandburg to pick up my tackle box, whispering, "And here I am in hip boots. _Very_ kinky, Chief." I chuckled as he blushed harder and looked away.

In fact, it was very warming that Blair noticed me, even in waders. It was warming that he noticed me at all; I was no kid anymore--balding and high maintenance and difficult to live with. Blair was intimately familiar with all of my faults, and he still, sometimes, looked at me and saw something that moved him.

I felt good for the rest of the morning.

Of course, it couldn't last. Blair's fly fishing lesson got interrupted by an animal attack, a couple of poachers and, it turned out, a full scale smuggling operation. We did some checking and turned up quite a bit, enough to arrest the remaining poacher. It would have been a very simple bust if we hadn't gotten caught up in a federal sting and arrested two game wardens.

The senior agent was a royal pain in the ass--totally focused on the job, no time for civility, no interest in the fate of anyone getting in her way. All attitude, no fear. Basically, she was me in a Smokey the Bear hat. Which meant she was absolutely impossible to work with.

This did not stop Sandburg from trying to play matchmaker. "So," he said, "what do you think of our two feds?"

"Well, Rafferty's not so bad, but I could do without what's-her-name. Walters."

"Yeah. Right. You know what I think? I think there's a definite attraction between you two."

"Yeah. I think you've been chewing peyote buttons again."

"Yeah. It's inevitable. You guys are too much alike."

He was way too smug, so I had to argue with him. "You're forgetting your physics, Chief. Opposites attract, like charges repel. And you can trust me on this one: I'm repelled."

Except I wasn't, and Blair knew it. It wasn't just that Elaine Walters was tall and muscular and confident and had amazing hair. She was a professional. She was like Caroline, only more so. She wasn't the kind of woman to play games or whine about communication. A woman like this wouldn't demurely eat half a salad at the restaurant and then go home and bolt a sandwich or ever say, 'I don't know, honey, whatever you want to do,' unless she really didn't have any preference that night. You would know where you stood with Elaine. She wouldn't say 'no,' and mean 'yes' or say 'yes' and mean something...incomprehensible.

Not that it mattered, really. She was a fed, after all. You couldn't date feds. Or you _could_ , but it wouldn't work out in the end.

She was a pain to work with. She almost screwed up the initial contact by wearing a wire. The whole operation would have gone into the toilet before it even started if Tommy Woo hadn't been checking me out. The scent of his desire almost raised goosebumps along my arms, but it was easy enough to play him once I knew what he wanted. I was charming; he gave us the benefit of the doubt. Even though I was, apparently, a married man.

The thing was, Woo was completely different from Elaine, but just as attractive. He was smart. He was exotic. He was careful. He exuded strength and passion. He was fascinating and dangerous, and when he called to arrange a buy I had to clinch down on a little frisson of excitement.

Although I am not normally big on introspection, I wished things weren't moving quite so quickly--it would really have been nice to have time to think all this through. Woo was cautious, though; he didn't give us a lot of time to play around. He gave us a location and a time, and then sailed the boat we were on right out of the harbor. The exchange would take place at sea--away from possible surveillance. It was a very good tactical move, and it made me just a little nervous. I didn't know how good a sailor Blair was, and he and Rafferty had no idea what they were sailing into. There was nothing to do, though, but continue forward and hope we carried it off until we made the deal and the Coast Guard closed in.

The Coast Guard had damn well better close in.

On the long trip out, Woo served a gracious supper of rare (and--not incidentally--protected or endangered) delicacies. It was very....creepy, eating illegal food, and I have to say that bear paw was nothing to write home about, but Elaine and I both managed to down it all gracefully.

Woo watched us closely, measuring us behind his charming smile. Playful but deadly, he baited and tested, looking for signs of deception, for weakness, for...something else entirely. "I was surprised," he said, "that a poacher like yourself would know Sun Tzu."

I didn't flinch. I tried not to look too eager. "You know him and you're a smuggler."

"Ever read Miyamoto Musashi?"

My God, he was smart. His only weakness was his arrogance and I wasn't sure that was an opening I could use. "The Five Ways of Strategy\-- it's a favorite of mine -- ground, water, wind, fire and void."

"Very good. Have you mastered them?" For a moment his eyes shone, and I could tell he was trying not to like me.

"Not completely." I found myself wanting to look away, and I turned to Elaine. "Sun Tzu and Musashi were writers. They wrote about the philosophy of war."

"Well, to Sun Tzu, life was war. One was either in battle or training for it. Miyamoto believed that the way of the warrior is acceptance of death in the cause of duty."

"Yeah, but we can't forget what Gandhi said: 'The true warrior does not die killing.'"

"Gandhi? You don't seem like a man who'd practice nonviolence."

He seemed amused, and I had to remind myself not to enjoy this too much: I was undercover. The situation was dangerous. If things went well, I would be arresting this man quite soon. "Well, in life, I'm a pragmatist; in my heart, an idealist; but Patton once said--"

Elaine cut in, sounding more like a woman whose man is flirting with someone else than a woman annoyed at being left out of guy talk: "I've got a favorite quote, too. It's from Coco Channel and it goes, 'As long as you know that most men are like children, you know everything.'" She remembered she was undercover, and she was playing it very well.

Or maybe not. She offered me a heron's egg, her hand softly brushing mine. She smelled irritated, but also excited, and I liked the way the scent of her adrenaline lingered in my nose.

It was sitting there between them that I realized the feeling was the same--the same electric exhilaration, the same nervousness, the same hint of the forbidden--Tommy unreachable because he was my suspect, Elaine because she was a fed.

Sharp and wonderful and dizzying and the same.

It was a long night, and I spent it worrying about whether the Coast Guard was following us, about where Blair was, about whether or not we'd catch the big fish we were after. Actually, it was almost surprising how much my vivid bisexual impulses _weren't_ worrying me. I mean, surely it didn't mean I was who I had always thought I was. Surely this was proof that I wasn't your average, red-blooded, normal American male.

Except--

I was exactly who I always had been.

I still felt like me. I had to still _be_ me, because I couldn't be anyone else. As for not being normal--well, taking the example closest to home, there were lots of things about Sandburg that weren't 'normal,' and lots of ways he was different from me, but his sexual preferences hadn't been high on either list. Hell, what had worried me most when I found out about Blair was that he'd get hassled and wouldn't be able to take care of himself.

I wondered if I was going to get hassled. I could probably take care of myself....

I wondered if these feelings had always been part of me, or if I had changed....

I wondered if they would go away, and if I wanted them to....

I didn't have time to think much about it. We were still undercover. The situation was still dangerous. It was no time to be careless.

It was a long night, and almost funny--Tommy and Elaine pursuing me, me responding to both of them, each of them giving dark looks to the other--and all of us trying to be professional and keep in control.

The next morning, Blair arrived--without Rafferty, which worried Elaine, but there was no way to get a detailed explanation. I watched his loose hair swing forward as he leaned down to untie the cargo, and something in me...tightened. What I felt for Elaine and Tommy was nothing on what I felt for Blair. What I felt for them was new and exciting and dangerous. What I felt for Blair was old and deep and safe. His hair was dirty and a little matted. He smelled like old sweat and stress. He had lines under his eyes from not sleeping, and he moved me more than Tommy and Elaine combined.

That was not the time to worry about whether or not I was in love with my guide.

We ran into a few setbacks. Rafferty had ratted us out to Tommy's boss, and we got tied up in the hold while the boss's henchmen set explosives to sink the boat. There were a couple of tense moments before Elaine and I figured out how to get ourselves loose while Blair and Tommy debated environmental philosophy. In the end, though, we took back the boat and netted Ho Ng, the big fish, and all his men. Tommy got away. I wasn't sure what to make of the fact that Tommy saved my life and practically handed me Ng before he sailed off, or that I didn't mind losing him as much as I should have. I was, definitely, relieved that I wouldn't have to testify against him in the foreseeable future.

The Coast Guard and the Canadians finally showed up about a half hour later with Simon. It was another three hours or more before things got wrapped up and we set sail for home. I went up on deck and leaned against the rail, looking out over the endless, fathomless water. Even to me, the world was infinite water in all directions. I would have much rather been at home.

Blair came up beside me, resting tiredly against the railing. "Everything OK?" he asked.

"Yeah, fine." But his shoulder was against my arm, hot and solid and _right there_. I turned my head to find him looking up at me. Had I really never noticed that he had such beautiful eyes? But no. I had noticed. I reached for him constantly, listened for him, looked at him. He was vivid and beautiful in my life, and had been for so long that I didn't even realize I'd stopped dating, and was perfectly happy spending my evenings home with him.

I tore my eyes away and looked back out at the churning, grey water.

I wished I could have his help in figuring this out, but I could picture what he'd say--it was a sentinel thing, like keeping the windows spotless or listening for footsteps outside the door. Or it was some kind of transference, like for a psychologist or a nurse; happened all the time. He'd been very useful to me, and anyway he was around all the time. Or else, he would say it was because coming out at nearly thirty-five had to be stressful, and I knew he was 'safe.' Whatever. What was I going to answer? 'No, Blair, I'm in love with you'? Not hardly. If I had learned anything from the last twenty-four hours it was that I _didn't_ know my own mind, didn't have any idea what love was or whether or not I was feeling it.

So I kept my mouth shut and leaned into him, letting his shoulder warm and comfort me.

It was a long, odd, _horny_ summer. I kept finding myself looking at Blair, burning with curiosity. And with other things.

What was it like to kiss him?

What would his skin feel like under my tongue?

It was just impossible. Every time I turned around, there he was, smelling like desire and hope and promise. He was like some kind of drug. It was confusing as hell. I had no idea what I'd do--even if I decided to do anything.

So I stayed away from Blair and dated a lot, sticking with what I knew. Sandburg, bless his heart, was supportive and helpful, like my own personal cheering section.

I saw Elaine for about two weeks. She couldn't take my mind off Blair, but even so, the sex was fantastic. She was a top, of course. Very. But she was attentive and considerate and generous, so I usually let her drive. The problem was, she also tried to take charge outside of the bedroom, and as much as I liked her, as good as the sex was, as much of a relief as it was to be with someone who didn't play games or get coy--she drove me crazy.

When we broke up, Blair took me out for beer. I tried not to check him out too obviously.

In July, I dated a mob widow briefly. Very briefly--turned out her husband was only pretending to be dead and she was going into the witness protection program. We were using each other, I knew that even at the time. But she had smelled so needy and lonely, and the courage it took to eat every night facing down the Lazar crime family fascinated me.

But none of that put a dent in my growing obsession with Blair. I would wake up in the morning with traces of dreams of him running through my mind. I wondered constantly about the details of what men did with one another. I wondered where Blair liked to be touched.

I wondered if I ought to dress differently, since I was sort of gay now, after all.

I wanted--so badly--to talk to my best friend about this. I wanted Blair's advice and his reassurance and his acceptance. But how _did_ you talk about this? _Could_ you even talk about this? What if I told him and he came on to me? Was I ready for that? Could I go through with it, or was it all only a weird fantasy?

What if I told him and he didn't come on to me?

What if I came on to _him_ and he just sighed and patted my shoulder and told me that it was just a phase and I'd get over it?

What if I came on to him and he said he didn't sleep with informants? We wouldn't want to jeopardize all our work just for a little sex, would we? No, I couldn't risk that.

In August, Genevieve Benet came to Cascade.

She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She was trying to change the world, and she did it in those public, nonviolent ways that Blair had always admired so much. She faced her enemies unarmed. She spoke truth to power. Blair was enchanted. He actually said to me, "I just don't think that you appreciate who this woman is and the impact that she's had. She's got the most beautiful way of looking at the world with this moral certainty that I've never experienced before. I tell you, man, I could sit there and just listen to her talk all night long."

How marvelous. A veritable paragon.

Really, it was kind of educational. From my new vantage point I could clearly see that those sharp, irritated, resentful feelings I'd had around Iris and Orvelle and Sam and Maya had been jealousy. Blair looked at Genevieve--what kind of name was Genevieve?--the way he normally looked at me. He trailed around behind her like some kind of puppy. It wasn't even like he was sleeping with her. I could tell. He adored her, and he wasn't even getting any.

So for almost a week they wandered around the city seeing the sights and taking long, romantic walks, while I tried to keep the thugs sent by her own government from killing her. With no help from either of them.

At least Gustavo pretended to let me arrest him. A pity bust. God, I was pathetic.

Blair was a little depressed when Genevieve left town. I took him out for beer. He got over it, the way he always does.

A couple of weeks later my cousin Rucker invited us out for his birthday. I was looking forward to the downtime--fishing, quiet walks on the island, evenings watching the sunset. Maybe, if things worked out, I could talk to Blair--oh, not to tell him everything. But just--you know--explain that there had been some--changes--in the way I thought about myself, or the way my body thought about other people. Maybe he could give me some advice, some hints on how to get along.

Things didn't work out.

There was a storm. There was a drug czar, and his thugs, who shot at us. There was a pretty girl, to whom Blair wanted to give the benefit of the doubt. When things finally got calmed down, it was time to go home.

* * *

 _You know, Jim, if you're so anxious to teach Cassie the realities of detective work, why don't you just let her fall on her face once or twice?_

 _That's not my way, Chief._

 _You know what I think? I think it's 'cause you want to take her out._

 _Just because you find a woman attractive doesn't mean the whole world's in competition with you, you know?_

* * *

I couldn't figure Wells out. Blair said I was just too used to Ted Baily hiding in his office all the time, and when Carolyn ran that department she was always around, giving out theories and advice and just the right piece of equipment. If you wanted to find Carolyn, you looked in Major Crime or Robbery or Homicide first, or out in the field. She never administrated from behind a closed door sending out memos like messages from the moon.

It seemed to me that Carolyn hadn't been half so annoying. "Serena doesn't give us lectures," I said. "Sam doesn't."

"They're not department heads. Besides, Serena is an excellent scientist, but she usually isn't very interested in the cases, just the samples. And Sam--Jim, Sam is brilliant and creative, but she, well, she doesn't play well with others. Hell, half of Robbery is so afraid of her, they won't go down there when she's on duty."

But I had gotten used to a Forensic Department that just gave me the reports I wanted and kept its opinions to itself unless they were asked for. Anyway, even if Blair was right and Cassie was completely reasonable and I was being a total shit--I couldn't afford to have a smart forensic analyst, who paid attention to the bigger picture and pursued mysteries in her off time, watching me conduct investigations.

Despite all of that, if I had really thought she was interested in Blair for himself, I would have left it alone. I really would have. Sure, I didn't like Cassie--she combined the directness of a man and the deviousness of a woman in the most unattractive way possible, embodying the worst of all worlds and proving that Blair was right all along about gendered stereotypes. But I didn't have to like the women Blair dated. They came and went, and how I felt was irrelevant.

But she wasn't pursuing Blair because she liked him. She pursued him because Major Crime had learned to get along with minimal input from forensics and she saw him as the weak link--the outsider allowed in, the gap in the cop/not-cop line. She was using him. No, that wasn't just a guess on my part or an assumption based on prejudice or even wishful thinking. I could smell the difference between desire and calculation, thank you.

For a while, I tossed around the idea of moving in on Cassie myself; Blair thought my love life was sadly neglected. He wouldn't compete with me if he thought I really cared about a woman. But I just couldn't pull it off. Cassie--who was, I admit, intelligent and ambitious and funny and not even, if you pushed her into a corner, completely without a sense of fair play--irritated the hell out of me. I tried to charm her. I tried to put on a convincing show of pursuing her. It didn't fool anyone. Although, I admit, Cassie was happy just to have me polite, for any reason. Which did make me feel a little...bad.

As inconvenient as her intelligence might be for me personally and for the safety of my secrets, she was just trying to do her job. How do you complain about someone for _not_ just going through the motions?

Fortunately, before things with Cassie could go too far in any direction, a case came up that took me out of town and completely distracted Blair. Unfortunately, the case was suspicious deaths at Starkville.

One of them was a kid I knew from high school. We used to play football together. Not a bad guy, not malicious, not petty, not even particularly stupid. He just tended to act before thinking things through or worrying about consequences.

He took some temp work in the illegal drug trade to pay off some gambling debts, and got caught: three years as a guest of the state. Quite a little mistake there, huh.

Or maybe I was deceiving myself, pretending that Matty was different from the thugs I arrested. Not that all of my busts were hardened criminals, either. I'd brought in my share of average Joes making stupid mistakes. I'd read them their rights, testified against them in court, and helped send them to places like Starkville.

Where, apparently, they died in particularly brutal ways in suspiciously high numbers.

We requisitioned and autopsied Matt's body. We looked at the death statistics from the prison. There weren't any patterns that we could spot, not in the victims or the manner of their fatalities: there was nothing unusual about violence in prison, and the listed causes of death ran the gamut.

But something was going on, I was sure, and the only thing I could think to do was go in and find out.

Sandburg, naturally, wanted to go in with me. Just what I needed--another one who didn't think through the consequences. I told him absolutely not, promised it would last less than a week, and made arrangements for someone else to be my contact.

What I forgot was that when Sandburg wants to be somewhere, sooner or later he gets there. I don't know why I even thought he would listen to me. I could only think of one or two occasions where something being stupid and him being scared shitless of doing it even slowed him down.

Being angry with him was completely hypocritical, given how deeply happy I was to see him. The staff probably wasn't in any jeopardy from the inmates under normal conditions--they brought relief from the boredom, they didn't really matter to the pecking order, and the price of screwing with them just wasn't worth it. It wasn't as if anything that happened inside would be a surprise to Blair. He'd seen Matty's autopsy report. He knew the sorts of things that happened in prisons.

But I didn't want him there! He had no business being there, small and beautiful and innocent-looking. I couldn't protect him there, not as a prisoner. If anything were to happen, I couldn't do a damn thing.

Oh, Chief.

I could handle this. I would be all right. There was no need for us to take this risk. You shouldn't be here....

There were so many things I wanted to tell him, things that nobody else would understand. Like the smell. I'd been in prisons before--hell, even the lockup at the station smelled as much of fear as of adrenaline and testosterone. But that place--it reeked of stark terror. It was everywhere, all the time, coming from everyone who wasn't clearly crazy, including the doctor and a couple of guards. The only reason people weren't constantly sobbing and pissing themselves with horror was that showing weakness was one of the things they were afraid of.

And what I could hear! So many of the conversations were so...mundane. What's for dinner. My kid's getting married. You finished with that book? But some of the others....my first night, one guy was hauled out of his cell by guards. He was begging not to go wherever they were taking him. Later, somebody at the other end of the cell block was raped. It was brief and quiet and I could smell a little blood. I lay still on my bunk, teeth locked and shaking, and screwed my eyes shut. I couldn't stop this one. Even if I could, trying would just mess up my chances to get a look at the big picture. It might get me killed. Or worse.

That was something else I didn't want Blair to see--me being tough enough, nasty enough, not to be messed with in a place like that. My size helped a lot, and not smiling. Cops aren't marshmallows. But--this was a new order of cold. I pushed people out of my way more than once, with a casual hardness that made my own skin crawl. I pretended not to see a lot of petty, nasty shit that I would have stopped on the street.

I was looking for something big enough for people to repeatedly wind up dead. Listening to that place got old, but I told myself that the quicker I found out what was going on, the quicker I could get out and bust Blair's butt for coming in after me.

The mission went south pretty quickly. By my first contact with Blair, on the third day, I didn't have anything. Well, petty shit, signs of embezzlement, black marketeering, a prescription drug racket. The next day I got fingered by a con whose brother I'd put away. But that same night, I got a look at It, that big thing I'd come in looking for. No hard evidence yet, but all we had needed was an idea, some place to start, and I'd gotten that. So. Blair was coming in for a class the next day. I'd drop a message in the laundry, which Blair could pick up in the back hall on the way to the employee's entrance. Simon would yank me. Everything would be fine.

My God, what they were doing in there. I finally got a good look, glimpses when the crowd parted. My God. I'd seen cock fights, animals with steel spurs on their feet, fighting in a pit. They fought madly, desperately, and when they tried to retreat or stop, their handlers prodded them on. You could barely hear the animals screaming for all the cheering and jeering and betting.

This was worse. Unimaginably worse. I wanted to get out. More evidence would have been nice, but we could go forward from what I had. I just had to make it until the next day when I could get out.

They cancelled Blair's class. I had no idea whether or not he got the note. Not, I supposed, since nobody came for me. I was in trouble--not just from Miller, who was threatening to rat me out if I didn't put his slimy ass back on the street. Vinson had taken a serious dislike to me, and was just looking for his chance.

Running might have been desperate and stupid, but what else was I going to do? All I had to do was get to a phone. Staying where I was, I didn't see any chance at all. Even after they captured me, even after I knew what was coming at the next fight, I didn't see how I could have not tried the escape. I had all that night and all the next day to think about it.

And also to think about what I would do when they put me in that cage with Vinson. I told myself I wouldn't fight for somebody's amusement. Not like that. I just wouldn't. I wouldn't give my captors what they wanted. I wouldn't let them take away my dignity. I wouldn't let them win. If I was going to die, then I would die like a man, not like a stupid, desperate animal. I'd spent my whole adult life fighting _for_ one thing or another. I wasn't going to fight now for somebody else's greed or sick thrills.

It was almost funny, how short a time my resolve lasted. Vinson was one crazy, messed-up puppy. I could smell it on him. He should have been stopped, possibly heavily medicated, but he'd been egged on and pumped up for months now. He was just a tool they were using to make a profit. I didn't want to hurt him. He wasn't the enemy, not really. He was hardly even human.

But after he'd knocked me around a little, I started to defend myself. He just kept landing blows, in no hurry to end it, just wanting to hurt. I gained some ground on him--he had no finesse or particular skill. When it was clear that I might get the better of him, he pulled out some pepper spray--and suddenly my whole face exploded in pain and I couldn't breathe right and I couldn't see...the pain made _me_ crazy, too. It was amazing how little it took, in the end, for me to stop being human. Before I knew it, I was tearing into him, loving the sound of my knuckles crushing his flesh.

For the next round, they threw Turner in with me. He was desperate and scared and pissed. My impulse, my instinct was to protect myself. My training was to protect myself. He had a knife, and in a fight, him or me, he was desperate enough to kill me. For me, the pain was gone, but so was the rage. I still couldn't see, but I could hear the crowd. I didn't want Turner to kill me, but all I could grasp of living was the smell of blood and fear and lust and the sound of bets being made on who was going to die. All I had of myself was that I didn't want to kill Turner, but that was a small, weak certainty, and the more I grasped at it the more it seemed to fade away.

All at once, the world tumbled and changed as Simon and his team stormed in. Between one breath and the next the prisoners were gone, and the guards and the spectators. Just like that it was over. Tidy. Thorough. A good clean bust.

I blinked, still unseeing, and tried to collect myself. I was just a professional doing a job, and now the job was done. Not a lot of fun, but why whine. It was over.

\--except I nearly killed Vinson with my bare hands--

\--and I should have killed Vinson. It was Vinson who killed Matty--

\--no, no, no. Whatever that was, it was wrong. All of it was wrong--

"Jim?" I stopped as Sandburg crept up beside me. "Jim, you OK? What do you say we get out of here?"

"What the hell were you doing?" I meant to shout it, but I could barely hear myself. "Isn't it bad enough you have no sense of self-preservation, but couldn't you at least listen to me? I gave you a fucking order, Sandburg."

I was expecting an argument. He just whispered, "Yeah. I know. I know. But there wasn't anybody else. The imported talent was sick, and if we'd used any of our guys, they would have been recognized."

"Right, and that goes for you too--"

"No. No, remember? We moved the guys who would recognize you, and since I just work with _you_ , well, then I was clear too, right? There wasn't time to make room for somebody else from Cascade. Or anywhere in Washington."

I laughed once, a harsh blatting sound. "For all the good it did." But Miller was dead now. Shot in the back. Another 'attempted escape' for Hanlon's convenience.

"Jim? How badly are you hurt? There's an ambulance outside. Let's--"

"No." I flinched at the idea of some strange medic pawing me. "I'm fine. Let's just go home."

"Jim...you don't look so good. You might have -- I don't know. Let's just--"

"I do know. If I was badly hurt, I'd feel it. Trust me." It was a lie, of course. Besides being blind, I was completely numb. I didn't feel any pain, I didn't feel anything. Blair's hand, gently brushing my arm, felt like there were several layers of kevlar between it and me.

"What happened to your eyes?"

"Pepper spray. Not the expensive kind. I'll be fine. It's nothing."

So he led me out. The SWAT team recognized him--apparently they'd all had several cozy hours to get to know one another. It was cold outside--late fall, damp and biting. At the car--not Blair's, I didn't know it--he produced a bag with one of my sweatshirts, some bottled water and a cold hamburger. I couldn't eat, but he helped me get the denim shirt off and I put the sweatshirt on and soaked a wad of tissues in the water to hold over my eyes. Blair hovered, speaking softly, adjusting my movements so I didn't trip or drop anything or hit my head on the roof of the car getting in. He smelled distressed. He smelled angry. He smelled a little scared. I was really tired of the smell of fear.

It took only an hour to get home--no traffic after midnight. I rode with the window open. The air was cold, but sweet. I couldn't see the open night, but I could hear it around me.

At home, Blair steered me into the bathroom and gently began to undress me. When the nausea hit, I tried to move away. His hands stilled on my arms. "Jim. C'mon, man. I have to see how badly you're hurt. Please."

I threw up. Not a lot, but all over him.

"OK. It's OK," he said. But it wasn't. The pain came flooding back, all of it. My eyes and throat burned. Every breath felt like it was full of tiny particles of broken glass. My stomach was coming out in deep, aching bruises. So was my lower back, and my jaw. My left arm hurt from where I'd landed on it, and on my other hand, my knuckles hurt from hitting Vinson. I was also cold, which I hadn't realized before.

Blair got me out of the rest of my clothes, cutting away the tee shirt when I couldn't raise my arms. Then he sat me down on the toilet and looked me over. His hands hovered over my stomach, my chest. "Does it hurt when you breathe?"

I nodded.

His hands glided, not quite touching, but spreading warmth like a shadow over my skin. "Here?"

"No. My throat. From the pepper spray. I haven't broken a rib. I haven't broken anything. I just--I just want a shower." The cold was terrible, and I shivered. It hurt, shivering, and did nothing to warm me.

Blair turned on the heat and put a towel around my shoulders. "You're shocky. If you went down in the shower, you'd get hurt. We can't."

I almost laughed at the idea of getting hurt, but I couldn't afford to let go of the idea of getting clean. Showers in Starkville had been a weekly event. I hadn't washed since I'd arrived.

In the end, we compromised. Blair ran a bath that wasn't nearly warm or deep enough and washed me himself. Fine, whatever, as long as I was clean, as long as the smell was rinsed away. My eyes felt like they were being eaten away with acid. Each time I reached to rub them, Blair gently nudged my hands away and ran clean water over my face again.

Blair tried to talk me through the pain--every move hurt, my vision was still blurring in and out between swollen lids, I was so cold--but he let it go when I said "No." I could feel him thinking he was right, wanting to fight me, but he just calmly backed down. When he had to leave me alone to go get my bathrobe, he ran. He took me up to bed with an arm around my waist, nervously eyeing the floor below us. He tucked me in, and then sat down on a spare pillow in the corner.

I didn't argue with any of it. I didn't even really think about it until later. I hadn't really been able to sleep---there. It had been days since I'd had any rest. Days. But even then, in my own bed, in my own home--

I would close my eyes and hear those people screaming for me to die. Or smell Vinson, smell his craziness, sick and hateful and cruel. That smell had stunned me the first time I'd seen him. Never in my life had I smelled something like that. Never.

This was my bed, soft and warm and safe. It didn't smell like metal or sweat or blood. Nobody within reach of my hearing was crying. Nobody was screaming for blood. Nobody was watching me.

I dreamed about it all night, the cell, waking up again and again to stare into the darkness, afraid that when I closed my eyes, I'd open them to see Turner's bunk above me.

In the morning I woke to find Blair already in the shower. Starving, I headed for the kitchen. When he came out, there were pancakes and bacon and eggs and oatmeal. Odd, that Blair would have bought bacon, especially when the milk was outdated and bad. "How did you not notice this?" I asked. "I can smell it from upstairs."

"Oops. Sorry. I haven't been home much these last few days."

I blinked, realizing that the world had not stopped while I stepped out of it. "What's been going on?"

"Oh. Well, I don't know. In Cascade? I haven't been here. I only came back when I had a class, pretty much."

"Only came back...from Starkville?" He nodded. "So, what? You got a motel room."

"Not exactly. I kind of started sleeping in my car."

I tried to figure out what that meant. "Why?"

"I didn't mean to -- I just. I was worried. I wanted to be handy."

"So you stayed in town and slept in your car."

"Yeah, pretty much. Look, I know it was useless and silly, I just--"

Something in me ached and burned at that, something more than the bruises and sore muscles that had stiffened over night and hadn't been affected by the ibuprofen yet. He thought so well of me. He had no idea how little it took, in the end, to turn me into a vicious animal, no better than any of the prisoners who had been put away there. He had no idea that I was still angry and confused, that I was hiding anything from him.

I retreated upstairs to get dressed.

We didn't hurry in to work, but I'd gotten up pretty early and even with the big breakfast we were there by ten. Simon wanted a report out of each of us. I kept mine as brief and factual as I could, leaving out everything that didn't absolutely have to be there. There was no reason for Simon to know how far I'd gone. He'd be disappointed enough at my stupid little escape trick. Not to mention the question of whether or not using my ranger training and going to town on Vinson counted as police brutality in this situation.

I finished before Blair, and decided to take a look at Turner's file. It was only when his records came up, displaying his whole life in front of me that the world suddenly tilted and I whirled with vertigo.

Yesterday, Turner and I had been in the same cell, locked behind the same door. We'd been fodder for the same death, neither one of us free, and not a single choice between us--about anything, except, maybe, how hard we fought before we died. Now here I was, casually calling up his life, his history. Knowing whatever I wanted about him, or maybe anyone.

Here I was, sitting at my desk. I could leave if I wanted to. Or not. Nobody would stop me if I went to the door.

Here I was, surrounded by cops--and I had no reason to be afraid. I _wasn't_ afraid. Hell, right then, I couldn't think of anybody I was afraid of.

Yesterday, I had been afraid. Last night, when the pain turned me inside out, until I was blinded and numb, I had been just as full of fear as I'd been full of raw hate.

"Jim?" Blair said softly.

"Yeah, I'm OK."

"Wanna talk about it?"

I didn't answer.

He tapped the screen. "Who's this?"

"My cell mate. Blair--"

"Yeah?"

"When is justice enough?"

"Huh?"

"I believe in stopping them. I believe in getting them off the streets. But--when is justice enough? Is the punishment supposed to go on forever?"

"I don't think so...." he whispered.

"You must have thought about this. I know you."

"I think about the victims, too. Since I started here. I think about that a lot when I see the...men in holding or in court. I think...if the victim were someone I loved, I would _want_ the punishment to go on forever, but I know you can't get anything from pain but more pain. I think there has to be something better."

I swallowed, not satisfied. How many men had I sent to Starkville? _No, don't go there._ My eyes fell on the sheaf of papers in his hand. "Your report?" He nodded, and I held out my hand.

I read the pages rapidly, hungrily, hoping, I suppose, that Blair had seen something there that I hadn't, that he would somehow make sense out of all of it. But it was just a report, long on facts, empty of meaning.

Until I stopped, staring at the words sliding in and out of focus on the page: Blair had picked up a note at the laundry drop day before yesterday. But it hadn't been from me.

So close! Blair had made it to the drop. God, Miller, it had to have been. So close.

They had thought I was fine. That I was making jokes.

A commotion from Simon's office brought my head up. He was agitated, nearly vibrating, and for a moment I tensed, prepared to defend myself, before I remembered that someone being angry was not something to be afraid of. Simon's heart was racing, and I could smell his anger and pain.

But when he came out, his face was calm. If his voice hadn't been so unnaturally quiet, you wouldn't have known anything was wrong. "Jim, have you seen a doctor?"

"No, sir. I'm just fine."

Simon nodded and turned to Sandburg. "Get him looked at, and then take him home."

As Simon left, as slowly and silently as he'd approached, Blair turned to me. "What's up with him?"

"I think he read my report."

"Should I?"

"No," I said, knowing he would anyway. "Let's just get out of here."

We went to a park, not to a clinic. Blair didn't argue. It was cold and misty, but he didn't complain, just followed me along the paths through the short, grayish grass. I was still sore, so we moved very slowly, but the drops of rain felt good and the air--God, in there, there hadn't been enough air.

There was only one street vendor open. We bought hot dogs and ate them on a damp bench near the pond. A cold, unhappy goose who had procrastinated about finishing the flight south came up to beg for bits of bun.

Nobody watched that bird. Nobody kept tabs on what it was doing. It could fly south any time it felt like, or stay here and shiver, or hell, fly east if the mood struck it.

Beside me, Blair, finished with his hotdog, turned on his cell phone. "Hey, Jasmine, it's Blair. Are you free at two? I need a favor...Yeah." I leaned back against the bench, letting his voice wash over me. I didn't have the energy to focus on both ends of the conversation, but it was none of my business anyway. "Go over to media services and pick up the film _Between Men_ and show it to my Intro class...313...No, it's a 'smartclassroom,' all the equipment is there...Well, if you want, I'd love it if you told them what you told me about the Israeli army. Yeah...Yeah...No, everything's OK...No." He glanced at me. "Well, one of my cops got the shit beat out of him while he was undercover yesterday....Well, probably, but," another glance at me, "He's pulling some macho cop bullshit and won't go to a doctor. The captain asked me to baby-sit for a while...Probably." A bitter snort. "If he were hemorrhaging, we probably would have noticed by now...Yeah. Thanks....Thanks. I owe you for this, Jaz...OK. Bye." He clicked off and sighed, closing his eyes.

"You didn't have to do that."

A shrug. "The camouflage works as well for me as for you."

"I don't want you to get in trouble."

"I won't. I'm in the field: that really is more important than anything to anthropologists. Informants come first, and still being physically on campus instead of Outer Mongolia doesn't change that. Of course, I'm not in the field they think I'm in.... But the essential truth is, I need to be here, and Jaz understands."

"I doubt the administration understands."

He snorted.

"Blair. About the doctor. I just--"

"I understand. OK? I get that you _really_ don't want to. I get why. And I'm fine with that."

"You're pissed off."

"Yeah? So? It isn't _my_ body, and it isn't my choice."

"Since when?"

Blair had badgered me into seeing a doctor against my preferences on at least three separate occasions. He constantly criticized my diet, wouldn't use a deodorant spray in the bathroom because it was 'unnatural' and 'toxic,' and I didn't even _know_ what was in what he tried to get me to drink the last time I got sick.

"Since what happened to you...screwed up your boundaries. OK? You need space right now, I know that." He took a deep breath. "I'm not real good at staying out of things, I know that, too. I admit, I'm not really happy. But being angry is not a big deal. It isn't going to kill me. I can live with that. I should have better control than to let it out like I did on the phone. That was passive-aggressive and petty and I'm sorry."

He just wanted to have me looked at. No big deal. Inconvenient and cold, but it was just a doctor. Nothing worse than a needle, if that.

Lord, was it just a few days ago I was standing in front of that strange doctor while she inspected me without meeting my eyes and asked me intimate questions about my health and history? If we went to a clinic now, it would be because I chose to. I could say yes, or I could say no. It was up to me, this time. It wouldn't be the same.

"Jim?" Blair said softly. "It's OK. No problem. All right? Let's just go home. Or we could walk some more. Whatever you want."

When we got home, Blair started cooking. He made bread and cookies and then marinated chicken to broil in the oven. I knew what he was doing--he didn't want to just sit and stare at me (that wouldn't be polite), and going into his room to study would make him too unavailable. So he was just...here. Occupied, but nearby. In case I wanted anything.

I stood at the windows, thinking that the loft was too small, and that after almost a day I was still _way_ too angry, and that if Blair knew how badly that place had broken me he wouldn't think highly enough of me to spend the day cooking.

"Jim? Jim? Dinner's ready." I turned around slowly. He looked tired. How much sleep did he get last night? "Do you want to eat?"

"Leave me alone," I snapped. The words were out before I regretted them. I expected him to flinch, to be hurt, but he looked back at me calmly and said, "OK." To my horror, part of me was disappointed, wanted a bigger show of him backing down, wanted--God!--even wanted that hurt so it would be clear who was in charge.

I watched myself, knowing I was losing it, having no idea how to get it back.

"Blair!" I said.

He turned around, still calm, his withdrawal paused but ready. His eyes said that he didn't mind cutting me quite a bit of slack, and that while it couldn't go on forever I still had some time left.

He had no idea how deep this was. "Blair," I said again.

He nodded and came closer.

"Do you know what was going on...when you and the state police came in?"

"Yes, Jim," he said levelly, "It was a cage fight."

"It wasn't the first one."

"What happened in the first one?" He was rock calm, completely. If I couldn't have smelled his grief, if I couldn't have heard his heart racing, I would never have known this wasn't just some ordinary discussion. But I'd seen him do this at the station, talking to Joel about a couple of really ugly bombings he'd worked, or when Earl Gains told him how he'd lost his youngest brother to gang violence. He could be completely non-judgmental without being the least bit detached.

I wished he would detach a little. I wished he wouldn't look quite so closely. "He was big," I said.

"Bigger than you?" Slowly. Calmly. Somehow, just as close as he could get without violating my comfort zone. His eyes never left my face.

"I nearly killed him."

"OK," Blair whispered.

"It isn't OK!" I shouted. "It isn't OK. I nearly killed him. For nothing, I nearly killed a man."

"You were defending yourself--"

"It wouldn't have made a difference. One way or another I was going to die. Even if I survived the ring, afterwards Burnette would have just shot me in the back or the guards would have held me down--" I stopped, tripping over the pictures in my head. "For nothing."

"Jim, the survival drive is pretty powerful. That doesn't mean--"

"I was in there less than a week. Less than a week, Sandburg, and that's all it took. That's all it took to turn me into an animal. Worse than an animal--animals don't pound and pound and pound on each other because they enjoy it! You don't know what I did in there! They killed a man--not ten yards from me, and I didn't do anything."

"How badly were you outnumbered, Jim?"

"That doesn't matter!" If I had been trying hard enough, Liotta would still be alive, or I would be dead. How afraid could I have been, to let a man die like that? "You don't know--Blair, I--"

"I don't care," he said--and then suddenly the calm crumbled and he was close, too close, up in my face shouting. "I don't care! You survived! You're _here_ and whatever you had to do to get here, whatever it took to survive, I don't care!" He blinked, made himself step back. "I know that's wrong. I know that in a few days--" a snort that sounded a lot like a sob "--or maybe some time next year I'll have some perspective and maybe I'll be upset about that, about what you had to do. But right now I don't care. All that matters to me is that you are alive."

I sagged into a rising disappointment. I had, I realized, been waiting for Blair to tell me, in detail, how I had sinned. I had expected him to find all the ways I had become _wrong_ and explain how I could be right again. But although he was trembling with anger, none of it was for me. I closed my eyes. "I was the same, as bad as the worst of them. Worse--I beat Vinson, after all, didn't I? All those things I learned to do a job...I let them use. For entertainment. Just to pound somebody."

"Jim? Will you listen to something for a moment?" I didn't answer, and he continued quietly, "A while back--I don't remember, twenty years? They did a study. See, they took a bunch of normal guys--you know, just some bunch of volunteers--and they randomly divided them up into two groups and put them into an empty prison, to study the dynamic between prisoners and guards."

"Blair, I can't--"

"Yeah, I know, but listen." Even pushing as he was, though, he waited until I took a deep breath and nodded that I was listening. "They had to stop the study almost immediately--a matter of days--because everybody got crazy. The 'guards' got dominating, the 'prisoners' got mean and everybody got violent. They had to cancel the study because it had turned into a kind of torture. Jim, those people were just...average. Accountants. Businessmen. Students. The men you were in with--my God, the prisoners were bad enough, but the guards! Jim, man, being in that place...it has to mess you up a little. It would mess anybody up, even if the guards hadn't been--"

He stopped, his mouth tightening in a sad parody of a smile, and struggled to pull his anger in. "Jim. You know, it's harder to get permissions to do a study involving prison inmates than it is to do one involving newborn babies. Really. I've seen the paperwork...." He swallowed.

"See, the reason is that prisoners don't have any more ability to say no to things they don't want than babies, and they don't have any more chance to defend themselves. In fact, it's worse for prisoners, because usually babies have parents who look out for them and have their best interests at heart. At least, that's what we hope. But prisoners--all they have is the state. Our, um, our criminal justice system takes away their rights and even their simplest freedoms and locks them up--and I'm not saying that's wrong or that we shouldn't do it or--or anything like that, my opinion on social responsibility and rehabilitation aside...." He swallowed again, trying to collect himself. "We take away their rights and lock them up, and that means that we-- _we_ \--are responsible for them. We have to look out for what's in their best interest, the state and the officials we elect and the people who pay taxes. Yeah, it's _prison_ , it's not supposed to be a picnic. And they have to be stopped, somehow. But, goddamn it, when we take away their right to choose what to have for lunch, we do _not_ take away their right not to have the shit beaten out of them for the entertainment of any sick bastard who has the money to pay to watch!"

He stopped, looking away for the first time, blinking hard. I wished he had kept talking--his voice was all that had kept me anchored, and once he was silent, the world tumbled and spun around me, flashing and unreal. What was the truth? Was I a monster? Or was the evil somewhere else? Vertigo filled all the places where I used to have balance.

"Somebody was killing those people, Jim. Somebody had to make it stop, but to do that...somebody had to go _in_ there. And you did it. You went in there. The surprise isn't that," his voice shook, "that you got hurt. It's that you won. You stopped it, Jim. We got the guards. We got the spectators. There's evidence and people ratting each other out right and left. It's not going to happen any more. You did that."

The vertigo tossed me and I gasped, trying to find a stable place to stand. But the spinning wasn't in the room, it was inside me, and there was nothing to hold onto.

Except for Blair, who was suddenly right in front of me, close enough that I could feel my breath echo off the top of his head. My hands caught at him and held on. "You're hurt, Jim," he said. "You went into a terrible place, and it hurt you. But you can get through this. You're going to be OK. It just takes a little time."

"Oh," I said, able to speak, finally.

"It wasn't your fault, what happened in there. That you couldn't beat it, then. It was too much for everybody. They made it that way. But the only reason it isn't still happening, right now, is you."

"I thought--you were the one who was innocent--" I whispered.

"It isn't about being innocent. Or strong. There's nobody who wouldn't have been messed up in there. Not if they were sane at all."

I remembered Vinson. "Not even then."

We stood there for a while as I adjusted to this new world Blair had created with his words. When I finally stepped away, he let me go at once. "I need to take a walk. You know?"

He nodded. "Want some company?"

I shook my head. "No. Thanks. I just need ....."

"S'OK. No problem."

It was hard to leave him, knowing that he'd worry. But I needed a little time and some open space.

Mostly what I thought about, as I walked along the damp sidewalks, was rewriting my report with an eye more toward putting nails in ex-warden Hanlon's coffin than in getting the necessity of a report over with. I'd go see a doctor tomorrow. My medical records would have to be submitted as evidence. Pictures would be a nice touch; I shouldn't overlook that.

The next morning we went to the clinic the city contracted with for employee physicals. I took Blair with me, although there were good reasons not to. For one thing, I didn't think he needed a detailed list of my injuries. For another--the nurse who took my blood pressure immediately jumped to the conclusion that we were a couple. Which worried Blair, although I thought it was kind of funny--American society had a category for two men who were lovers, but not one for a sentinel and his keeper.

But I was afraid I still needed a keeper. I was tense and unhappy and I was having almost no luck dialing down the pain. I kept picturing some big guy with cold hands and rubber gloves touching and turning my body like it was an object....

So Blair stayed with me. When the doctor came in glancing at my chart and saying something snide like, "Let me guess--I should see the other guy?" Blair snapped, "He's the officer who went undercover at Starkville. Are you familiar with procedures for collecting evidence after a violent crime, or do we need to speak to someone else?" The guy backed down promptly--naturally it had been all over the news by then. Hanlon was facing as many as nine counts of conspiracy murder, and a group of the inmates was threatening the state with a five hundred million dollar class-action suit. Big stuff. I was treated with great deference after that.

So I got ex-rayed and MRIed. They tested all my bodily fluids, found a little blood in my urine--not enough to be seen by anyone but me, and I hadn't been paying attention. Bruised kidney: it would probably mend itself in a week or two. The bruising on my stomach was worse, but there was nothing anybody could do about that, naturally. Nothing they could do at all, really, but prescribe some pain pills I couldn't take, snap pictures, and draw up a report for the DA with all the lab work and films appended.

Through it all, Blair stood in the corner, out of the way, but watching. I let him do most of my talking--all I really wanted to say was _Get your hands the hell off me!_ which wouldn't have been helpful. When it was all over, he helped me put my shirt on over my stiff arms.

"Sorry," I muttered, vaguely embarrassed about how much I seemed to need him for even the simplest interaction with the world.

"Right. Remind me again how you're at fault here?"

It took a couple more days, but I began to get some of my equilibrium back. I went to work, got back into the old routine. Ate a lot of Wonderburgers. Griped at Sandburg about eating in the living room.

The pain eased up. The doctor looked at me again on Monday and pronounced me "mending." I knew things were definitely OK when Sandburg stopped backing down every time I got irritated by his weird cooking or mess or typing at all hours.

* * *

 _Santeria. It's an ancient religion. It was originally practiced by an African tribe called the Yoruba. I actually went to a couple of the ceremonies in New York. The modern version has a bunch of wild different cultural influences in it. It's really cool._

* * *

Wasn't that lovely. I'd thought this case was bad enough when it was just a cop killing in an ethnic neighborhood that already had shaky relations with the police. Apparently all that religious hocus pocus scattered around the crime scene couldn't be written off as just some weird third world cult, but belonged to some legitimate, ancient, minority religion. It was "cool." Great.

At least there was Blair, who was like a walking encyclopedia about these things. I asked him for some background. Apparently, comparatively speaking, it was pretty standard stuff--trance dancing, mediumship, etc. By the time he finished, he could tell I was completely appalled.

"Jim, it's an ancient religion. Sure, it looks kind of out there to us, but just because it's unfamiliar doesn't mean it's not totally legitimate."

"Whoa, there, Chief. I don't have a problem with their religion and I'm not going to go stomping on anyone's First Amendment rights."

"But you still think it's all a bunch of hooey."

I chuckled. "Nope. Never crossed my mind."

"Then what--"

"Let's get back to the job at hand, OK? What's with the scarf there?"

He thought about it. "The gold shawl? Whoever wore it was probably a priestess of Oshun."

"A what?"

"Oshun is the African goddess of love and beauty, sort of like Venus."

A priestess. Right. All dressed up for when the divine came down and possessed her body. How nice.

Blair thought I wasn't taking it seriously, that I didn't believe. Wrong. What appalled me was the possibility that it was real.

Don't get me wrong. Religion had its place. The moral philosophies of the god-fearing were, generally speaking, good for society. Religion gave you something to talk about at weddings and christenings. It gave you someone to pray to from foxholes.

But when whatever you were praying to started taking a more active role in your life, that was when you were really in trouble.

Sam Holland and I had been talking about this once in a bar in Lima late one night. He was saying that he wished he could have a vision, something earthshaking and totally clear, so there would be no doubt in his mind about the Greater Truth. That way, he said, you wouldn't have to wonder. You'd know.

I said, "Look what it did for Joan of Ark. I'd rather wonder."

My opinion hadn't changed in the years since. In my experience, the supernatural never actually helped you. Higher powers showed up in times of need--sometimes. Usually at the most inconvenient moment. Certainly not when you wanted them to. And they never actually helped. They just muddied the issue further, with cryptic hocus pocus or scary and/or misleading imagery and then popped out again, leaving you holding the bag, trying to cope with your "religious experience" while _still_ solving whatever emergency had brought them out of the woodwork to begin with.

So what I didn't get was why, if Santeria really did have gods who came down to borrow the bodies of the believers, they didn't hurry and find some other religion. Something involving less rapture and more, for example, bake sales or community service or maybe a nicer choir.

I wondered what kind of flake would actually _want_ a god to come down and hang out in her body while she--what? Took her own soul out for a stroll? Had a nap?

Imagine my surprise when the community affairs liaison sent by the mayor--by all appearances educated and professional and _normal_ \--turned out to have been at the ceremony.

To have been our witness, in fact. Except, since she was possessed at the time, she didn't actually remember whatever it was she witnessed.

See? It just proved my point. The spirits never actually _helped_. A real witness we could have used.

Blair, of course, just saw this as a minor set-back. He wanted to put Ms. Santiago back into a trance and ask Oshun to give her statement. Yeah, right. It didn't seem likely that a goddess would make a very good witness.

Blair gave me another lecture on religious tolerance, a new lecture on state dependent memory, and demanded to know if I had any better ideas.

It worked. Sort of. Mostly. Blair and I split up and each did the magic we did best: I hopped myself up on adrenaline and went out to find a weak link in Cortez's organization. I finally settled on a nasty piece of hired muscle who did just a little more thinking than was probably good for him. It's kind of scary, how good I am at intimidating coldblooded killers. It's mostly a skill, but it helps when you can convincingly project your conviction that guys like him are nothing to be scared of.

Blair...never went into too much detail about what he did with Corinne. He did say she was tense and upset, and it took most of the night to get her into the right space. But I could pretty much guess--how many times had it been me, scared and tired and desperately needing to do the impossible? If he managed me, he could manage anything, even calling down a god.

But. We almost lost it all anyway. The uniforms we had guarding our witness were badly wounded. We almost lost both Blair and Santiago to Cortez. Cortez got away from us long enough to take a hostage, which is never good. But on the other hand, whatever Oshun said to Murphy broke him so badly that he started singing and didn't stop until he'd given a detailed and watertight confession.

When it was over, I found myself wishing I had as much peace with my secrets as Corinne Santiago seemed to have with hers. I wished I was comfortable enough with my new take on sexuality that the only reason I kept it quiet was my job. I wished I didn't still get the feeling sometimes that the whole sentinel thing wasn't just a rare but healthy variation in normal human sensory capacity and that I was some kind of mutant freak of nature, like a two-headed calf. I wished that I had a nice category to pop my own...mystical experiences into, so I wouldn't drift between telling myself that they were hallucinations and feeling guilty that I wasn't better at interpreting and following their instructions.

Life went on. The bruising on my belly and chest turned yellow and blue and began to fade. Joel put in for a transfer from the bomb squad to MC when Napier announced his retirement. Laura McCarthy came to trial, finally. I didn't testify. She got twenty years. At the station, Cassie began to settle down. I stopped giving her a hard time, she stopped trying to prove something and we both just paid attention to our jobs. As a bonus she stopped coming on to Blair and never commented about me opening the door before she knocked.

Blair went undercover in a mental institution. He was in less than a day--thank god. That was about all my nerves could handle. Not that I was worried about the facility. The problem was Chapel--crazy and violent and thorough and smart and quite possibly free to come and go as he pleased from a high security mental hospital. Even so, Sandburg was fine. He had the shit scared out of him, but he managed to come out with the information he went in for.

Even afterward, I wasn't sure why he was so hot to do it--he may have just wanted to be involved or maybe remind Simon and me that there were things he could do that Cassie couldn't. Not that he would ever admit to being jealous. But it was possible that he was giving me some of my own back, making me sweat it out while he went somewhere dangerous without me.

I was still thinking about him _that_ way. Dreaming about him sometimes. I didn't know what to do about it, so I tried to ignore it and enjoy his company. That was almost enough.

The loft got shot up again. Joel, Simon, Daryl and Cassie came over to help fill in holes in the wood and replace broken glass. My dresser had to be replaced--it was simply never going to be the same after sailing down the stairs. And the stereo. And two of my copper-bottomed kettles. We spent all day Saturday putting things back in together. Ordered pizza, got a batch of cookies from Big Box. It was almost a party. I almost enjoyed it.

Except for the part where a psychotic killer had broken into my house and grabbed my roommate. Again. Blair and I had a long talk about that, and about the fancy security system that turned out to be about as effective as tissue paper, about how upset he was with himself for not handling it better, about how sorry I was that I hadn't stayed closer until we knew for sure. In the end, we drank a lot of beer and decided not to dwell on it.

Not long after that, about a week before Thanksgiving, Simon got shot. I had just met Stephen at Sapporo for an early dinner--he was going to be gone for the holiday, and we wanted to get together before he left--when Blair called with the news. Simon had left work early for a meeting at his bank, apparently, when two guys came in to rob the place. I'd thought only Sandburg had that kind of luck. The perps got picked up, but Simon was shot in the abdomen. He was in surgery until after midnight.

The next morning Blair and I slipped in to see him. We didn't get much of a look. I'd hoped to have a better idea of how things were after seeing him for myself, getting a whiff first hand of how he smelled--but he was full of antibiotics and pain killers and drenched in antiseptic. Blindfolded, I wouldn't even have been able to recognize him.

The day just got worse from there. The powers that be had sent in an interim captain to oversee the department--as though Major Crime couldn't have handled things for a couple weeks without a babysitter. Blair thought I had a problem with authority--me! I _am_ authority. I've been operating in a formal chain of command since before Sandburg could drive. I know how to take orders, just like I know how to give them. But some green paper pusher who didn't even take time to scope out how a department was functioning before making sweeping changes and had done nothing to earn anybody's respect was a problem to work around, not an authority to suck up to! That woman had no business messing with a system that worked! She had no--absolutely no--right to sit in that office!

I.

She.

Shit.

She pulled Sandburg's ridealong.

Just like that.

I sent Blair away and tried to talk her out of it. Her reasons were, quite frankly, bullshit, but she was pulling rank just to establish position. Getting Blair back would take a little working out. Fine. I could handle it. I knew how to handle superior officers who were shitheads.

I made a strategic retreat and found Blair in the bathroom, pacing in short sweeps and muttering to himself. "Take it easy, Chief," I said, shutting the door behind me.

"Jim, what are we gonna _do_?" He was nearly quivering with tension.

"Worst case scenario, we wait for Banks to come back. This is just temporary. Relax." But I didn't feel like relaxing myself. I felt like tearing into that officious bitch--but that would be the last way to solve the real problem, so I'd let her have the field. I had to let this go, calm down and think.

"Two weeks? Three? More?" He dropped his voice and leaned in, "How safe does that seem to you? Aw, God!" He began to pace again.

"It's been months since we had a serious problem. I don't have you with me every minute now. This will just be...less." But I preferred to stay at the station if I didn't have him. Not that there was often a choice, but...weeks. Three. Four. Always, always having to watch myself. Always, always having to be so careful.

Slowly Blair raised his eyes. "We'll have to tell Joel."

"No." I didn't even have to think about it. "Absolutely not."

"You need back-up."

"No."

"Damn it--" He stopped, collected himself, lowered his voice further. "Joel is our friend. He is smart. He is very, very hard to shake. Jim, it could be a lot worse--"

"No." I pictured explaining to Joel about all the things I could do that normal people couldn't, all the things I knew that other people didn't. "No. Look. This isn't over. I'll talk to her again. We'll think of something. We'll work it out."

He visibly tried to master himself, taking a few measured breaths. "Right. We'll think of something." He smelled like anger and fear and...something sad. It wasn't just my senses he was worried about. I put a hand on his shoulder. "Right. It'll be fine," he said. "Heck, maybe you'll discover you don't really need me anymore." Oh. Yeah. That would be the something sad.

I forced myself to chuckle and said loudly, "Well, there we go. The secret's out now."

"Um, oh. Huh?"

"It's not the senses, coach. I've been keeping you around for your cooking for the last two years."

He laughed sharply, leaning slightly into me. He looked worried, but not totally adrift.

"Look. Chief. We'll figure it out. We're partners, and some temporary chairwarmer is not going to mess that up."

Which is when Joel came in. He looked almost as upset as we did--apparently he had just gotten the news. He was horrified and deeply apologetic, seeing himself as the pretext used to oust one of his friends. I guess we could have been a bit more reassuring, but we were wrapped up in our own urgent problems that had nothing to do with Joel.

We just couldn't spare the energy. Despite trying to look confident and reassure each other, Blair and I were both pretty worried, and about what, Joel, of course, had no idea. Poor guy. He couldn't figure out why the prospect of working with him temporarily seemed to cause so much desperation.

The solution to the problem came when I saved Finkleman's butt after a badly thought-out undercover operation went sour. I hadn't initially been trying to save her butt: I'd thought she was dirty and was really, really looking forward to arresting her. This was less satisfying, but just as effective. Suddenly, she owed me a favor, and Blair was the only one I wanted.

My God, what she did was stupid and dangerous! A sting, with no backup, no support, no records at all? I started to rant to Blair, but he countered with a list of the times I'd done it or something similar. Department policy always seems much more reasonable when other people are violating it, I admit, but surely I'm not nearly that bad.

After the Finkleman thing, Sandburg and I sat down and had a long talk. The truth was, our partnership was dependent entirely on Simon Banks' goodwill and the forbearance of the police chief. We didn't have any official standing at all, and absolutely no guarantees. Our best shot was for Blair to finish the dissertation and graduate. If he had the degree, Simon and I could work on getting him on as an official consultant. Or he could come on part-time as a civilian volunteer. Almost anything was less vulnerable than a student doing research.

I was worried, naturally. Anthropologists travel--look at all the places Blair had already been. If Blair weren't tied to Cascade with his dissertation, he might get opportunities to go other places, sometimes. I didn't want to interfere with that. I really didn't. But just continuing the way we were would definitely end sooner or later, and probably in a permanent and official way that I wouldn't like at all. Those first two days with Finkleman drove that lesson home pretty vividly. So I told Blair what I was thinking--not everything--but that a degree would give him more clout and give us more control over how things would go, and he agreed that it probably was time to get serious about writing. His committee was starting to ride him a bit, and he couldn't stay as a teaching fellow forever.

A little voice in the back of my mind kept pointing out that when the book was finished, Blair and I would have to reexamine our relationship with each other. There would be changes. I was beginning to think that there were some changes that I might be ready for. Or even, looking forward to.

In the meantime, though, everything was fine. Simon was back at work. Blair's class ended in the second week in December, and while he spent the evenings writing, the days he was in the field with me. I was ready for the Christmas blitz this year, and managed to dodge the worst of the smells and ignore the music I could always hear playing somewhere.

"Hey," Blair said one day after work, "How 'bout we get a tree this year. You know, a little one."

I paused and stood up with one shoe off and one shoe still on. "Um. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Chief. But aren't you Jewish?"

"Yeah. So?"

I gestured helplessly.

"The guy who wrote White Christmas was Jewish. And anyway, you're not."

Oh. "But--wouldn't you, sort of, mind? I mean, you live here...."

"Oh, yeah. Because, you know, the _last_ thing you want to do in front of an anthropologist is celebrate a religious holiday. We just hate that. Look, you just seemed to be handling the seasonal input better this year, and I thought you might want to enjoy it. You don't have to, but if you want to, I'll help."

So we got a tree. We put a wreath on the door. On Christmas Eve we had Stephen over to dinner. And Simon, who wouldn't get Daryl until the following afternoon. And Naomi, who was passing through at the last minute. We had a pretty nice time, even factoring in the inherent patheticness of two divorced men who don't have primary custody on Christmas Eve.

* * *

 _I'm telling you, I think he's holding back his left hook._

 _You know, I never thought you'd know a left hook from a leftover._

 _Come on. I'm a huge pugilist fan. Roy and I go way back._

* * *

One of Blair's presents for me was tickets to a big boxing match right after New Year's. Boxing wasn't my favorite sport, but it was OK, the seats were fantastic and this fight was touted as one of the biggest in Cascade this year.

Turned out Blair was old friends with one of the fighters. It shouldn't have surprised me--the kid knew everybody. Because he was so sure Sweet Roy was going to mop up the floor with the other guy, I talked him into a friendly bet--just so I could gloat, on the off chance he was wrong.

But no, Blair had called it exactly right. The fight was great--short, but a beautiful display of skill and talent and physical perfection. I was impressed. Then Blair produced another surprise--passes to the locker rooms. He was glowing smugly as we showed them to the guard and then slipped into the winding maze of small corridors under the sports complex.

"How did you manage this? Blair, this is great!"

"Yeah, well." He shrugged. "We used to date."

I had a sudden vision of the magnificent man in the ring--beautiful, sleek, strong, exotic, ten years younger than me at least...dear God, of course Blair's taste would run to athletes. Of course.

"Jim? What's wrong?" I didn't realize I had stopped walking until Blair turned around to look back.

"Nothing." But it didn't sound convincing, even to me.

His eyes narrowed. "Jim? What? Are you having some kind of problem here?"

"No! Of course not!"

"Because I told him you were cool."

"No!" But that wasn't good enough. He was looking hurt. I had to give him something, but I couldn't think of a lie. I settled for part of the truth: "It's just...weird. I've never met one of your ex's before."

"Sure you have."

"I mean...guys." I hated the way my voice dropped on that last word. I had been a hell of a lot more 'cool' about this when I didn't want Blair for myself.

"Right." He nodded.

"No. I haven't." Believe me, I would remember.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes. You have. At the very least you met Jack."

"Jack?" I repeated blankly.

"Kelso. You remember--we had him to dinner in August? He's come to our rescue about twice now? Straight hair? Glasses? Chair? Ringing any bells yet?"

Oh.

"Or--what? Did you think he goes out on limbs like that for everybody he served on the recycling committee with? The last time, he damn near got killed. What did you think was going on?"

Oh. If I'd thought about it at all, I'd just assumed he had issues with The Company and took any reasonable opportunity that came along to give them grief. "Oh," I said. "But--"

Blair stepped closer, his eyes going hard. "Yes, Jim?"

It occurred to me that Kelso was probably _not_ an unsubtle Neanderthal who never bothered to think about interpersonal relationships. If this was the sort of thing I was competing with.... "But--but--he's faculty!"

Apparently, this was a right thing to say, because Blair blushed slightly and fumbled, giving me a second more to collect myself as he protested, "He wasn't when I met him!"

"Uh huh," I said, pouncing on the offensive.

"When I met him, he was a Waterton Institute fellow writing up his book. He didn't get hired by poly sci until later!"

"Uh, huh." I could barely contain my relief that the conversation had turned away from me. "Are they allowed to date undergrads?"

"I was not! Jim, man, come on." He sighed. "Look. It was just...a thing."

"A thing."

"Yeah. He was sorta looking for something...dangerous."

"And that would be you?"

"Hey! I was everything his Uncle Sam had warned him against!" He wiggled his head at me. "Young, counterculture rebel? Second generation hippie? I was as scary as it got."

"Uh huh."

"You know, the whole fed, ex-secret agent thing. He was everything Naomi warned me about." His eyebrows hopped up and down. I squashed the urge to remind him that I had sort of been a secret agent, too. "It was...really nice." His eyes got kind of sad and far away, and I suddenly remembered a couple years back, after the whole mess with Ben Chavez. Every spare minute Blair could get, he spent at the hospital with Jack. I hadn't thought about it then. I'd been tied up with other things, and I'd only made it by to visit him once.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I was way too young for him. The only thing I had any focus about back then was anthropology. I drove him crazy." He sighed.

"I hate to mention it, Chief...." I said.

He laughed and punched me in the shoulder.

To my profound disgust, Roy Williams was a great guy--charming, generous, intelligent, friendly.... I kind of liked him, which made hating him as much as I did sit badly. That night, when we got home, I lay awake for a long time, visions of Blair and men who were not me playing over and over in my head. Men who were nothing like me.

I knew that he loved me. I knew that he thought I was attractive. I knew.

But even if he did love me _that way_ and _that much_ I didn't know if it would be enough, or even what, for Blair, 'enough' was. The relationship I already had with him was completely unique, more than I had ever guessed was possible. It was probably the best thing in my life. But it was not the only relationship I wanted to have with him....

I was strong--but probably not as strong as that beautiful young man who had ten years on me. I was smart, but not like Jack was smart. I hated them both.

The next day we got a call, a body in a ditch over by Newford Highway. I was trying not to think too much ahead of time--too many assumptions just get in the way when you're taking that first look at a crime scene.

But I must, somehow, have been assuming too much, because I just wasn't prepared for it to be Roy. It just--I couldn't face it. I turned the body over and it just washed over me, along with the smell of old blood. I stumbled, retreated backwards. I wanted to go to Blair. I wanted to pull him away, but that would mean I'd have to tell him. How could I? How could I say it? How could I watch while he....

When Janet died, he was so angry and so sad. They'd never even dated. Here--oh, God! Here was another one. So soon, here, in my city, and I couldn't undo it or fix it or protect Blair from how much it would hurt. All I could do was clean it up afterward, find out who'd done this to him, to them, and that wasn't enough, it wasn't anything, it wasn't worth shit, when I could hear Blair behind me at the bottom of the hill, crying while Brian stood beside him and tried to say the right things.

He'd just seen him yesterday. Everything was fine, was great. How could something like this happen, who had done it?

I knew I had to go back down there. I had to show Blair some support. I had to work the scene, collect the evidence, be a professional. But for a few minutes, it was all I could do to stand quietly beside the truck looking like I was in deep thought. God, there was nothing I could do for Blair. There was no comfort for this. How many times had _I_ done this? With Danny? With Incacha? With Jack? There was no comfort for this, no help. Practice hadn't taught me anything, I had no wisdom or perspective to share.

I tried. I kept him involved with the investigation, even though he wasn't thinking clearly and was taking stupid chances. I gave him opportunities to talk about it. But he wouldn't talk. I couldn't fix it. I couldn't make it right. I couldn't make it be over.

Blair didn't want to believe that Jamie could have done it. But I had to prepare him for that, didn't I? Because the evidence pointed that way, and the more he refused to face the possibility, the more it would have to hurt in the end if it turned out that little brother Jamie had done his big brother in. As much as I wanted to give my full attention to Blair, I had this case. I had to solve this. I could not neglect it for him, or soften my interrogations because he hurt, or look for answers only where he wanted me to look. Even if I knew the answers might break his heart.

I was so afraid they would.

We were lucky in the end. This was one of those times when Blair's faith in people paid off. Blair had that much at least, that Roy had never played around with his brother's girl, and Jamie, however mad or greedy he'd been, had never raised a hand to Roy.

For the next couple of weeks he was...not quiet, not exactly. He was very there, very involved. He re-did his syllabus twice. He argued with the administration about the location of his classroom. He came to work with me Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and Thursday afternoons. He dated some, in the evenings, and typed sometimes. He was attentive and pleasant, almost determinedly attentive and pleasant.

Something in him hurt, and he wouldn't talk about it. It was hard to watch him, to smell grief and regret in his sweat, to listen to him staying up late working--or pretending to work. But I made myself stay close, and as hard as that was, it was good, because he did notice. "Jim? You know, you're cute when you're hovering. But really, I'm fine."

"It's OK not to be fine," I said. He'd said that once to me.

"I'm just--I can't say I miss him. I hadn't seen him in almost two years. It's...sad. And hard. I keep thinking about how easy it is to take people for granted."

I nodded, to show I was listening, even though there was nothing helpful to say.

"I've been trying not to, you know? Take people for granted?"

"Yeah. I know."

The cold, damp days of January passed slowly. Blair's smiles got less sad. The cases kept coming.

We got a call to go to Rainier on a Monday evening toward the end of the month. Crimes at the university were not a big favorite for either of us. In general, incidents were down--vandalism, mugging, theft, and so on. But we had worked four murders there in the last couple of years and we were both tired of it.

Blair and I weren't thrilled even before it turned out to be one of the weird ones. The DB had a picture of me in his wallet. Great. Lovely. A weird one that just _smelled_ like an up-and-coming serial killer and rather than waiting to fixate on whatever detective got assigned to the case, he'd picked out one ahead of time: me. Lovely. How flattering. I could just kill Simon over that Cop of the Year bullshit.

Blair turned up at the station just after lunch the next day, even though he usually spent Tuesdays on campus, working on his lectures or holding office hours or going to the library. He came into Simon's office smelling like worry and carrying a bunch of files so old they had been printed from microfilm rather than off the computer.

"Hey, guys," he said cautiously. "I just came from the university where I ran into a grad student who was assisting McCain. He said McCain was doing research on serial killers." He glanced at me anxiously. "Said he'd focused in on one in particular, called the 'Country Club Strangler'."

Simon nodded. "Yeah, I remember that cat. He had a three-year spree in the early '70s."

"Yeah, that's right." He was trying to answer Simon while watching me. "He had seven victims--all of them were middle-aged, wealthy businessmen. They were all strangled, then stabbed in the chest _after_ they were dead and then their empty wallets were placed on the wound."

Oh. Is that how he did it? I didn't think I ever knew the official cause of death or the pattern of the attacks. I didn't watch a lot of news back than, and nobody discussed things like that with a kid. Death and blood and the swarm of police and press and bystanders, that was what I remembered. Busy grownups.

Strangled and then stabbed them.

Simon was getting into the story; it was history to him. "Freakshow even had a weird name."

"Wayne Hollow," I said, as the name floated up. "Claimed he was innocent. Never changed his story, but after he was arrested there were no more murders."

"Didn't he kill himself?"

"Yeah, right before it went to trial. Everybody figured they had their man, case closed."

He killed himself, I thought. That was right. He was dead. They arrested a man, and then he died and that was it.

"All right, so what am I missing here?"

Blair didn't answer, and I looked up to find him watching me somberly. "Go ahead. Tell him the rest," I said.

"Well. Right before the police arrested Hollow, Jim found his last victim -- a guy named Karl Heydash."

"You know," Simon said sourly, "this is just the type of information that a captain would like his detective to tell him."

"I didn't remember it, sir, until Sandburg mentioned it." Sandburg was still watching me, his anxiety just below the surface. I sighed inwardly.

"How can you _forget_ something like that?"

"I was ten years old. It was a long time ago."

"So, now we have a copycat," Simon said. He seemed very pleased to have made this much progress so quickly.

"I don't think so. At the murder scene there was this scent. It was very faint, but distinct. I've smelled it before. It was on the body I found, Captain. It could be our killer."

This perked Blair up. "You know that smell is closely linked to memory, Simon." He turned to me. "You know what this means? If what you smelled last night was beyond what a normal human being could smell, this means you had your sentinel abilities as a kid."

It didn't seem possible, but I didn't argue. Simon and I just took the file Blair had brought and pored over it for the next couple of hours. The pattern was the same, all right. Great.

I beat Blair home--he had an appointment with one of his committee members in the late afternoon.

It wasn't that the killer saw me as his opponent, after all. The important issue wasn't about me being the detective, it was about me being that kid. The game this nut was playing called for me in the role of central victim--someone to be played with and frightened before becoming the last body, probably in some spectacular way.

Did my role in this give me anything I could use? I had just found the body, right? Or wasn't that all? Did I know anything? Had I witnessed something? I didn't have whole memories about it. Even now, knowing the bare facts, my picture of that day, that time in my life jumped from moment to moment, with big empty sections in between. A color. A scent. The cold damp of late fall. A football.

There was a football in the closet with the other sports equipment. Remembering Blair's lectures about sense memory, I dug it out and held it in my hands, turning the rough surface over and over. I didn't have much hope--the impression of the football I was trying to remember would _have_ to be different than the one I was experiencing now. I had the senses now. Everything would be different.

But looking at it, it only seemed a little smaller in my hands. The roughness was much the same. The smell was similar. The way it grew ever so slightly warmer when you pressed it very hard between your hands...It was familiar. I could remember seeing a football very like this lying in the leaves, much more alike than it should have been.

Weird. But not helpful. Where, exactly, had I found that body? What had I been doing? I read the files Blair had brought. Again. A greenbelt near a street that wasn't familiar. A detective whom I couldn't remember. An autopsy report. The records on the Country Club Killer said very little, certainly nothing I could use to find who had killed McCain.

Damn.

Blair came home, finally. He danced indelicately around my state of mind, not wanting to push too hard or come on too strong, but too afraid to let it go.

"I'm a cop," I said bitterly. "I'm working on a case that involves me and I can't remember a thing from my past."

"Quit beating yourself up. You were a kid. You had something terrible happen, and I'm sure the trauma of that experience has shut everything off -- your senses, your memory -- everything. Sorta like what happened when you came out of Peru."

Right. Right. Blair was convinced that I had the senses as a kid. "So, how do I get unstuck?"

"First of all, you relax."

Been there. Tried that. For the last hour. "I just keep going around in circles, Chief."

"What I'm talking about is sense memory. All right? The sense of smell. Focus in on that smell and then see where that leads you."

But all I kept remembering was football. Not the murder, but the normal things. Stevie and dinner and tossing the ball with a neighbor, and Mom and Dad fighting even though they didn't live together anymore.

Blair was right. Of course, Blair was right. I'd had the senses before, I did remember that. It wasn't something that happened to me someplace far away and dangerous. It wasn't just a surprise hiding in my genes, an ambush from my ancestors. It had been me, the senses had come from me. I'd had them in the beginning.

They weren't from out there somewhere. They were from me.

Which should, at least, be helpful. I mean, if I had the senses when I found that body, I should have the really sharp, precise, complete memories that seem to come along with them. I had to remember. Surely, surely, it wasn't just my random, peripheral involvement that led this man to put my picture on McCain's dead body. Surely, there was some reason, something I could use.

But no. Even with Blair's help, I still--still!--couldn't remember a single useful thing about that murder.

Sandburg kept after me to go home, see if anything in my old house jogged my memory or if my father knew anything that might help. He was even more blunt and pushy than usual, but I suppose my reluctance seemed pretty irrational, and anyway, Sandburg'd been on edge ever since he found out that our psycho's interest in me wasn't professional, but personal, after all. The strangler wasn't dead, but apparently very much alive, killing again, and remembering me. I didn't meet his victim profile, either then or now, but that little detail hardly seemed reassuring. I could sympathize with Blair. If, for example, I found out that David Lash was alive and running around loose, I'd be a little tense, too. But I didn't know what to say when Blair pushed me to go home. I didn't know how to explain.

There was another body the next day. I fought it for a little longer, but the only real lead we had was me, and I couldn't remember anything. Stevie was even younger, so he wouldn't be any use...which pretty much just left Dad.

What was the point of talking to him? I knew what kind of person he was. I knew what he thought of me. Sure, going home could bring back lots of memories about the Strangler, but it would bring up a lot of other stuff, too. Hurt that would serve no purpose, that I had worked hard to leave behind, that I was glad to forget.

So, no. Talking to Dad wouldn't do anything good for me, personally. But professionally--it was the only lead we had, long-shot or not, and people were dying. I had to try.

It would have been nice if the old man hadn't been home. It couldn't be my fault if he just wasn't there, right? But he was home. And he was--

Old. Older and smaller and stumbling over himself at the sight of me. Not exactly as I remembered, and that threw me a little. Yet, so much like what I remembered that that threw me a little, too. "I'm working on a case, Dad," I said, trying to keep it professional, distant, painless.

"Oh, yeah, the Strangler," he said faintly. "I read about it in the paper."

"Oh? I thought you only read the business section." I hadn't intended to snipe; it wasn't professional. It was a childish impulse leaping out of an adult mouth, and giving in to those emotions could only make this scenario worse.

My anger hung between us for a moment, an embarrassing untidiness, but there was no return shot, no acknowledgement at all except a flash of uncertainty before he pushed onward. "You really think it's the same person?"

"We're not sure. I could use your help." I hesitated, not sure what I was asking for. What could he know? He'd arrived long after the police. Sally hadn't been there at all--she'd gone on ahead with Stevie while I ran to retrieve the football, promising to be right behind them. What could there be that wasn't in the official report?

"What can I do?"

"Uh, I need any old pictures or items, uh, clippings, anything you got from, you know, the time that we found the body."

"Oh. Sure, yeah. Everything we got is all packed away upstairs. Come on."

Lots of stuff. Toys. Pictures. Trophies. An old football helmet. My Scout handbook. So familiar, but old and small and stale-smelling. Had I really ever been the boy who lived this life? What kind of person had I been, then?

The thing was, I didn't really want the details. I said I needed those memories, but going back to the person I'd been at ten, even for a quick look.... I was frightened of doing it, and unable to cope when it happened. Jimmy had thought he'd understood what was going on in his world. He'd thought he was doing OK. He'd thought he was strong. But by then he'd already forgotten how to ask for what he needed. He'd already learned how to divert attention from the real problems and smooth them over politely. He'd already learned to be unimpressed by bullies and show no fear and push hard to win.

That little boy in 1973 had nothing to do with who I was now. His life had nothing I wanted, except for his memory of that body he'd found. I was so angry at having to go back there, when nothing could be fixed, nothing could be changed. It was all over and done and better forgotten.

I went back to work, a long drive in from the 'burbs. All of our original lines of inquiry about McCain had led nowhere, but a call had come in saying he'd had a bunch of video tapes dubbed and they were still sitting at the editor's. When Blair and I got there, it was too late. The tapes were destroyed, degaussed. The owner was dead--Sandburg found the body in the back, just like the others, although the scruffy young man could hardly be called a 'businessman.' The killer was still there, just outside. I found him by following the smell.

He got away from me.

That smell had been everywhere, strong enough to make the past and present run together like finger-paints. At ten, I hadn't known enough to cope with the idea of Bud dead. I understood it now. I understood death, and missing him, and why I'd never, ever thought about how he left me or why.

While I was being ambushed by that, I was being ambushed by--him. He got a couple of really good shots in before he could get away. How many chances at the suspect do you get in a case like this? How close can you hope to come? And I'd lost him.

I limped back to the shabby brick building that housed the custom video place and pounded on the door Blair had locked. He threw it open. "Jim? God, what happened?"

"He was here. I--"

"Are you hurt? Jim? What happened?"

I didn't answer him. I held out the knife, the handle wrapped in an evidence bag too small to hold the whole thing. Blair hauled me inside and sat me down hard on a chair by the door. His hands slid over me, searching for blood. I reached out and stilled him.

"Jim?"

"He got away." I let the knife fall on the floor. In the distance I could hear sirens.

It was late before we got home. I waited until Blair had dumped his stuff and started to reheat leftover stew for dinner before I told him. "It was Bud," I said baldly, standing in the center of the living room, not knowing where to sit or what to do with my hands.

"What?" Blair said, putting down the spoon. "What was?" and then, "No."

"I'd wondered where he'd gone after the game. He'd been there, but then he'd...."

The blood had smelled new and warm. I had never smelled death before. There was that other smell.

Blair took my hand, led me to the couch. I told him the story. Slowly. Twice. Trying to distance myself and take it apart for clues. I was starting it again when the phone rang. I let Blair pick it up, but when I heard Serena's voice on the other end, I held out my hand. Blair patted my shoulder and went to check the stew. I could already smell it was scorched, and when I finished with forensics, I dialed Pizza Bob's before joining Blair at the table to hash it out again.

It was curious--now that the surprise and confusion were wearing off, I was remarkably...calm. It was such an _old_ loss, despite how new it had felt for a few moments. I didn't feel bitter or sad, although I supposed I ought to. Regret. Yes. The wrong man had been arrested for that crime, the wrong man had died in his cell, and the man who took away Bud's life had gotten away.

That psycho was loose in my city now. Killing people. I couldn't afford any more mistakes.

The next day we had a full analysis and make on the knife, as well as an ID on the Country Club Strangler. The problem was, he'd been living under an assumed name for the last thirty years, and we had no idea what that name might be. If there was only one.

There was no doubt the man was our suspect, though. I'd seen him leaving the scene just after I'd found Bud. Wasn't that a lovely little present to be handed by my memory? Another bombshell, too little, too late.

Or maybe not. All we needed was someone who could give a name to that face, that was all. We knew which neighborhoods he'd taken his victims from, and where the bodies had been found. All we needed was someone who'd known him then, or even knew him now.

I went to my father first, although I had research going through old property records to see who had been living around there at the time. Shockingly--had I gotten any breaks in this case at all?--we stumbled on something right away. Scott Jeffries had been at that football game, standing behind one of the kids from the other team. "This one here! See? It's the same guy."

"God, Jimmy, I--I wouldn't know, you know. I mean, I didn't get involved with any of these parents. I didn't go to that many games...." I'd known that, obviously, but just at that moment it hardly seemed to matter.

I just.

Needed.

A name.

Dad had one. Mick Foster. A name, a suspect at last. I could have hugged him, but even our success couldn't take away how wary and awkward we were.

Although--he tried. As I was leaving, he apologized: a stunning first. I had no idea how to take an apology from him. I didn't want to forgive him, I just wanted to be able to forget all about it again, to let it go. But no, he was sorry. Sorry he'd been a bad parent, sorry his priorities had been fucked up, sorry my friend had died, sorry that when I'd begged him to believe me, to help me, he hadn't done either one.

"I'm not lying," I'd pleaded, even though I was too old to beg. "You believe me, don't you, Dad?"

"I warned you about your fantasies, didn't I?"

"I did see him. Sometimes I can just see and hear things!"

"No, you can't. Nobody can. Jimmy, this is not a game. You hear me? Now you've got to stop pretending or people are going to think you're a freak! You understand? Is that what you want? For people to think there's something wrong with you?"

I had seen Mick Foster. I'd told the police and my father. No one had believed me, of course no one had believed me. Dad had thought I'd made it up or was having some kind of traumatic reaction. "No," I said. "I was--I was telling the truth." But I hadn't kept on telling the truth, had I? No one had believed me, so I'd given in and stopped telling it. Dad told me hearing and seeing all those things wasn't normal, so I'd stopped doing it. "I was telling the truth. See? That's what Bud was talking about." I'd let them shut me up. I'd pretended to be what they wanted so hard that I'd even forgotten what the truth was. I'd forgotten what I was.

Dad was looking at me in confusion. A moment ago we'd been talking about his parenting skills. "What do you mean?"

"That I held back. That I didn't follow my instincts. But all I ever got from you was that there was something wrong with me! I stuffed who I was--who I am!--down inside of me." He was watching me almost nervously, and I marveled to myself; I was going to explain. I was going to come clean to him, to admit that I was never what he'd thought I ought to be, or even what he thought I was. "See, I have a gift, Dad. Now, it can be a burden sometimes, but it's a gift. It's just who I am."

He fumbled awkwardly, sinking into the chair behind him. "I know. I know. I know it," he whispered.

"Dad, I--" I stumbled a little myself, but charged onward. I wasn't keeping the truth quiet any longer. "I was telling the truth."

"I know you were, Jim," he whispered.

"What do you mean?" What did he think we were talking about?

"I know you were. I know it."

"You don't know that. You don't know that." The anger that had been straining to get out every time I set foot in this house burst free, and I didn't care. He didn't know. He had no idea. He never had.

"I _know_ it. I was trying to protect you. Do you understand? I didn't think people would understand you. They would think you were different and that would hurt you, and I didn't want anything to hurt you. You're my son, Jimmy."

He was reaching for me, touching me. Desperately, I pulled away. "You-- My senses. You knew!"

"Yeah," he whispered brokenly. He knew. He'd known about my senses. About what I'd seen. He knew what he had done to me. "I wish I could go back and change it all. I--I--" Shaking, he stepped away from me. His footsteps echoed weirdly off the walls.

I was in the car and half-way to the station before I could form a coherent thought about it. Then I laughed, so maybe I wasn't all that coherent. He'd let a murderer get away to protect me. He'd torn me to pieces 'for my own good.' The kicker was--the senses just weren't that bad! Certainly nothing to go to such extremes to hide from. Sure, I was very discreet about them _now_ but that was because it was the best way to use them. What Dad had done was just...excessive.

Wasn't it? I suppose it would depend on just how interesting the medical community and other parties would have found my abilities. Not everyone would be as gentle or respectful as Blair, and I had been just a kid then. I couldn't have protected myself.

But Blair had had dozens and dozens of people with hyperacute senses, and apparently they were all basically fine. None of their parents had found it necessary to install a traumatic repression. OK, they were ones and I was a five, but once you crossed over into 'freak' did it really matter how _far_ over you were?

God--what was I supposed to make of Dad, now? He'd known that I was a freak, and he'd loved me anyway. He hadn't been very good at it, true, but it seemed petty to hate him for what Sandburg would call "thorough interpersonal incompetence." On the other hand, knowing what I was so appalled him that he'd been desperate to keep it under the rug.

Then, just to make things hopelessly confusing, there were all those pictures. Of me. It was almost...sentimental.

Shit.

I didn't have time for this.

I had a job to do.

Simon had an address. We raided the place, but Mick Foster was dead. Had been dead, for days. The body in the bed was old and thin and smelled like disease, but the death wasn't from natural causes. This time our killer wasn't Mick Foster, it was Aaron. Blair had managed to get hold of a file, which he was still leafing through, trying to understand where the latest incarnation of the Country Club Strangler was coming from. I was wondering that myself.

What had Aaron known about those other murders, before? Had he known all along, or had he put it together one day after McCain had been there, asking questions? Or had McCain shown up with accusations, dragging everything out into the light? What had Aaron understood about the psycho he'd lived with so long? What had the world looked like to him that left no possibility of just walking away from all the hate and fury and sickness?

Unlike his father, Aaron wasn't smart or careful and he had no desire to get away with his crimes. While forensics was still just getting started at the Foster house, Aaron called there--

From my father's house.

Simon ordered the uniforms not to close in until we got there--he didn't want to push Foster into acting prematurely. But it wouldn't have mattered; except for Sally, the place was empty. Several of the rooms had been trashed. An antique chair I had not, as a child, been allowed to sit on, was in pieces on the floor. On the coffee table, pictures from the scrap book spelled out 'too late.'

He was trying to mess with my head, spelling out doom with images from my life. Well, thanks, but I had enough nasty stuff in my head already without an amateur psycho trying to help. He could keep his nightmares.

It wasn't easy convincing Simon to let me face him alone in the green belt behind Manleo Field. But I knew that Aaron just wasn't that dangerous. The only thing he had going for him was his insanity, but that only made him willing to commit appalling acts. It didn't make him skillful or unpredictable or smart. I could see what he had in mind, and I knew I was good enough to stop him. If I got the chance.

Sure enough, there he was, right where I knew he had to be. Aaron had gotten the position of the body wrong--of course. He hadn't seen the other one. He had no way of knowing that I would hear that my father was alive from several paces away.

Even so, if he had struck during those first terrible moments when I hadn't been sure how badly Dad had been hurt, he might have had me. But he didn't. He picked his fight badly, and when it failed, he ran.

I brought him down just after we had cleared the trees. I tackled him and cuffed him and stepped back. A clean bust, and--poof--it was all over.

Over.

Blair brought my father to me and then turned his attention to distracting Simon by being as annoying as humanly possible. He was giving us privacy, which was a nice thought, but neither of us had anything to say just then.

What could we say?

There was an ambulance and rescue team, and I passed Dad over to them before stepping back and collecting myself. I had seen this field before full of police cars and an ambulance and news crews and busy grownups walking purposefully and talking quietly to each other in somber voices. I made myself take a deep breath.

Softly, Blair came up beside me and rested a hand on the small of my back. "Hey. You OK?"

I nodded and managed another breath. The air was cold, and I could smell snow in the next day or so.

The squad car carrying Aaron Foster pulled off toward the street. Over on the left, Dad politely declined the medics' offer of a trip to the hospital. I remembered then that he had asked me not to follow Aaron, to let the arriving cordon take him from the other side. Mr. 'winning is the only thing,' and 'never, ever give up' had asked me to quit.

Did I know him at all?

Was it just being old and alone that had changed him?

Limping a little, Dad came back to us. He stopped just a little too far away and hesitated almost shyly. "Jimmy...I just..."

"Don't worry about it," I said quickly.

"So," he said. Then, "I guess you boys will be tied up with the case all night. Paperwork and processing or something."

Blair grinned. "Actually, no, I'm pretty sure not. This case was waaaay too personal. Everything has to be perfect and by the book. No way is Simon going to let Jim set foot in the station until Foster has been moved." I wondered if Sandburg had really not noticed that Dad was giving me an excuse to disappear.

Before I could think of anything to add, Simon walked up. He greeted my father politely, asked about his health, explained that while he needed to give a statement, it wasn't necessary to do it right this minute. Then he got to the point. "I'm afraid you can't have your house back for several more hours. Besides having the Foster house and two other cases breaking this afternoon, forensics is short-staffed right now. I realize this is an inconvenience, sir, but surely you can see how important--"

"Certainly. It's, it's no problem. I have my wallet right here? Yes. I can go to a hotel."

"Of course you won't," Blair said. "You'll come home with us. I'll take the couch, and you can have my room."

Startled, Dad looked from Blair to me. "I--I couldn't--"

"Of course you could. What's family for? It's no imposition; we have plenty of food in the house."

I sighed. "Dad, you've met Blair Sandburg. He's my partner at work, and we're roommates."

Dad looked at Blair searchingly. "You're a cop?" he said.

"Civilian observer." Blair shook his hand, gently. "Also, a graduate student at Rainer. I'm living with Jim...well, basically because he was kind enough to take me in when my last place blew up."

"I...see." He made no comment and asked no questions. "Jimmy, I can hardly impose--"

"Blair's right," I said flatly. "It's no problem. But we should contact Sally. Will she be with her sister?"

"I think so, yes."

Neither of us could remember the number, so I called information and got the listing for Susan Choi. Sally started crying again when she heard my voice, cried harder when I told her Dad was OK. I passed the phone to him, and he told her not to worry, that she could come back tomorrow or the next day or whenever she felt like it and if the press found her, she should call him and they would figure something out.

Then Blair and I took the old man home between us in the truck.

Once in the front door, Sandburg cheerfully dug a handful of take-out coupons out of a drawer in the kitchen and said, "In the interest of politeness, I totally lied about having plenty of food. What kind of take-out does everybody want?"

Little shit. We had food in the freezer. He was obfuscating to set up a few minutes alone for me and Dad so we could talk or share or bond or whatever. I scowled. Dad said that anything would be fine.

Sandburg just smiled his most charming smile and said, "If you leave it up to Jim and me, we'll just get into the usual fight about Chinese versus Greek, and then we'll start throwing things and the neighbors will call the cops."

"Chinese would be fine. Thank you."

Blair pointed at me and laughed. "I should have known he'd take your side. Just remember, this counts as your turn!" Then he was gone.

"So," I said to the quiet, empty room. "Beer?"

"Thank you."

I got the beer. It used up a few seconds.

"So. What happens now? With the case?"

"You'll have to give a statement," I began, and slowly outlined the process that would follow. "This, um. This could go on for a while. A couple of years. And it probably won't be prison. It'll probably be a psychiatric institution."

"Yes, I see."

Our neutral topic having petered out, the silence began to stretch again. I cursed Sandburg for his generosity. I dug out some clean sweats for Dad and sent him into the bathroom to wash and change. I put away the clean dishes.

Blair returned at last with a sack full of Hong Kong Kitchen's house specials. He got out real plates and serving spoons, a concession he rarely made when it was just us, and set the table. Dad emerged smelling less of fear and blood just as Blair was making some authentic and slightly acrid tea to go with the meal.

It was all very pleasant. A fact I had overlooked about my father was that he was a _successful_ businessman; he could make polite and interesting conversation with anyone, in any circumstances. Well, with anyone who wasn't particularly important to him and as long as the topic wasn't intimate. It was a skill Sandburg had too, finding some common interest, always having a funny story at hand, paying attention to whomever was present. "The trick is," he'd said once, "knowing whose pig has died." Which made no sense at all in context and must have been an anthropology thing. So Dad and Blair talked animatedly about the history of food in China and Dad's business trips to Hong Kong back when it was still under British rule. Frankly, after the last few days, it should have been nice not to have to talk about anything serious. Relaxing. Normal. For the life of me, though, I couldn't think of anything to say.

"So is it true," Dad asked, after they had exhausted the food topic, "what you said about your last place blowing up?"

"Oh, yeah, totally. Turned out a street gang had moved in next door and was using it to manufacture drugs. And, no. I really didn't notice. It was a _big_ building." Sandburg grinned at me. "The explosion was pretty spectacular. Jim saved my life--he got me and the lab animal I was keeping at the time under cover just before the wall blew in."

I knew this story. At this point, the listener was either supposed to express how impressed they were with me or ask about the lab animal; both options gave Sandburg the opportunity to keep the conversation moving forward, since hero-cop roommate and Larry the tv-watching monkey both made for great stories. This routine had gotten us through more than one really boring civil service reception. Dad, however, followed neither lead, but cast me an uncertain glance and frowned.

"I heard the fight," I said. "And I smelled the gas they were using as an accelerant."

Blair glanced at me nervously, and I said, "It's all right. He knew about my senses from before."

"Oh." He blinked. "Oh. Well, then. It's all cool." He smiled calmly at both of us. Even though he smelled sharply of curiosity and excitement, he wasn't going to grill my father about my sensory history on the same day as his abduction by a serial killer. Blair just nodded and served himself another crab dumpling before tilting the box and offering the last one to Dad.

Unable to bear Blair's gentle, cheerful gaze, Dad looked away sharply, sat rigidly for a moment, and then stumbled from the table. As the bathroom door shut behind him, I realized that I had done this on purpose. I had thrust Blair's casual acceptance and unquestioning support in his face, knowing he would come up short.

Blair looked after him worriedly. "Jim? What's up?"

I couldn't speak. I shook my head and swallowed.

"Jim? What's wrong? What's with the two of you all of a sudden?" He stood up and stepped very slowly towards me. "Jim? Is this some kind of stress reaction to what happened today?" A frown. He was thinking. So often, with me, he had to think so quickly; new concepts tended to turn up in the middle of a crisis. "Both of you at the same time?"

My hands opened and closed helplessly.

"Jim."

"He didn't back me up. I saw Foster--I saw him--and he knew I could do it, and he--he _apologized_ to the police for my imagination. He told me no one could have--" I stopped.

Blair was looking at me in bewilderment, his face flickering with ideas that twisted and slid away. "Why?"

"He said--people would--" The words trailed away. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't say it to Blair.

But he was watching me, and, being Blair, he guessed. "Did you believe it?" he asked.

Helplessly, I nodded. "Yes." _I'm sorry. I'm so sorry_.

"Do you believe it now?"

He was looking at me so much the way Bud had looked at me so long ago that I could have wept. "No. NO! There is nothing wrong with me!"

"No. There's not. There's nothing wrong with you at all."

"I was telling the truth."

"Jim, you were a child. It wasn't your fault."

"No, you don't understand. I was telling the truth, and he wouldn't back me up."

"Let it go, Jim. You're not that kid any more. Let it go."

"No. He--"

Blair's hand came down on the table with a loud snap that splashed vibrations on my face like a light blow. "No! Let it go. He did not kill your friend! Jim. He did not kill your friend, and neither did you."

I could only stare at him.

He leaned down. "You were only a kid. It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have done anything."

No. No.

"Don't shake your head at me. It was not your fault. The only person there is to blame is Mick Foster, and he is dead. He died. He couldn't let go, Jim. He couldn't move forward. He just--there was nothing to him at all, but hate. Jim, please--"

"I should have heard it. I should have heard him. I didn't know where Bud was, but he couldn't have been more than sixty or seventy yards from me...." No further away than a ten year old could kick a football. "I should have heard him. I should have done something."

"Jimmy? Son?" I looked up. My father was standing hesitantly just beyond Blair's shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. There couldn't have been anything to hear. They were strangled. You couldn't have--you couldn't have known. It wasn't your fault."

Blair blinked several times and cleared his throat. "Jim, even if the police had used what you saw.... The forensic evidence--it wouldn't be much _now_ , but it was really solid stuff then. I don't see how they could have _not_ prosecuted Wayne Hollow. Even if it had made it to trial and Hollow's lawyer had known to submit your testimony, we both know witness accounts are often the worst kind of evidence. Jim...you were just a kid. You weren't in a position to change things. It wasn't your fault."

I closed my eyes. Blair slid an arm around my shoulders. I leaned against him for long minutes, trying to convince myself that what he was telling me was true.

After a while, Blair said in a normal tone, "Hey, Bill. Why don't you put on some coffee. There's decaf in the freezer."

So we drank coffee and watched the news and the next day we took my father home to change and then, at the station, handed him over to Rafe to get his statement and file charges for assault and kidnapping.

For all his urging to let the past go, Blair's pity was a palpable and almost oppressive thing. I suppose for somebody raised by Naomi, my childhood would seem like a living nightmare. Blair watched me when he thought I wasn't looking. He urged me to meet with Stephen, and then, when I didn't act on his advice, he invited my brother to dinner and ambushed me with less than twenty minutes warning. He repeatedly pointed out that if I wanted to "talk" he was right there. He started pushing the meditation again.

After a couple of weeks I started to think up ways to distract him. It was too cold to make camping much fun, so I took him to a brunch at the art museum on Sunday (they had a new textile exhibit that was meant to be touched, so I could pass it off as sentinel curiosity). I took him to the gym and wore him out with basketball. I got Simon to give us a couple of low-profile and tedious cases, so that he would have to really concentrate on something besides me.

I told myself, whenever I remembered just _why_ Sandburg was so concerned on my behalf, that his solution was the correct one. I wasn't a kid any more. I wasn't helpless or dependent or unsure of myself. There _was_ nothing wrong with me. My senses were mainly useful tools, not an ongoing torment in my life. Whoever I was, I wasn't the man my father had tried to make me into.

* * *

 _We wanted to surprise you. You're not mad, are you?_

 _Let me put this another way without offending you. You know, there was a time when I lived alone. I worked on my own for years._

 _So--what are you saying? You want me to move out? I got no problem with that. Actually there's a room opened up right below us unless that's too close to you, too, and I'll be infringing on..._

 _Don't pull the Felix Unger trip on me, OK, Chief? You've made this sentinel thing work and I appreciate that. I wouldn't change a minute of it, but you're always there in my face, observing._

* * *

Toward the end of February I ran into Lila Hobson.

My interest in her had nothing to do with the fact that Blair was currently dating at least two people that I knew about. Nothing. It wasn't like the fact that Sandburg had no desire to settle down was news. In a lot of ways--the ways that don't involve waking up hard in the morning from dreams of kissing him--I was pretty satisfied with the relationship we had.

I just--found myself thinking about Bali, how it had been not long after I'd been extracted from Peru. It was only after I'd met Lila there that I began to really think about a future, and that a future was something I might want. Until then, I really hadn't wrapped my head around the idea that there could be something after Peru and the army and--everything. I could have a Life--get a job, have friends, start a family. Not live in a war. Sleep in a bed and shop in stores and speak in English and not have to set traps in the jungle for drug runners. I liked that idea, that amazing future hovering so close by.

I lost my way a few times in the years that followed. Not completely or anything. But there were periods, both before and after my marriage to Carolyn, when I wasn't exactly...well adjusted.

But here I was in one of the pretty good periods. I had a job. A home. Friends. My life was everything I'd first begun to hope for in Bali and more. And here was Lila. She was beautiful--impossibly beautiful. Soft. Lithe. Strong.

She was so, so female, but without any of the incomprehensible fuzziness that so often halos feminine women. She smelled incredible and her hair was soft in my hands and her laugh made my toes curl.

She had a very cosmopolitan view of the world; like Blair, she easily shifted perspectives and paid attention to details and took the whole world as it was and enjoyed it. She was strong, inside. So, so strong. She never took offense or got her feelings hurt by casual misunderstandings or doubted herself.

She was engaged. So, maybe it was a terrible idea, seeing her again. Maybe it wouldn't last. But--she was still Lila. I was still me. It was still wonderful to be with her.

I'd thought, once, that I could spend the rest of my life with her. It's true, she wasn't Blair, but she was wonderful, and maybe that would be enough. Maybe that future I saw so long ago could still come true. I could be that person. I could live that life, whatever I was imagining it was.

Well. That's what I was thinking at the time. Naturally, it was all worse than I could have guessed. She wasn't engaged. She was a mob hit-woman.

Piecing together her movements afterward, we found fifteen murders in the last nine and a half years that were probably her work. There may have been more. I'd known it all along, sort of, except my subconscious wasn't on good enough speaking terms with the rest of me to pass that information along as anything but headaches and spikes. The way the dagger smelled, and the shape of the wound it had to leave--that had been in there all along.

Blair tried to pass it off. It was just a small piece of information, Jim. Nobody would remember a small object they'd seen years ago while distracted. You didn't want to know--

But what I knew was that for all my protests of being well-adjusted and accepting myself and being OK in my life....I was still the repressed and repressing Neanderthal one inch away from a padded room.

What I couldn't face, my body told me about with pain and runaway stimulation. The headaches were the worst I'd had, ever. Large and blinding and...scary. The sensory spikes were no fun either. Usually, unless I'm paying attention, my senses don't really make much of an impression any more. When Blair first told me I'd get used to them, I laughed, it was so unbelievable. But now, yeah. I didn't forget, but I didn't notice, either. Just like you can ignore 50,000 people talking in a football stadium and watch the game, I could ignore Rafe humming to himself in the elevator or Sam and Blair passing double entendres two floors down. It really didn't matter that I could nail a fly between the wings at thirty yards if I was just looking at my computer screen a foot from my face. I'd adjusted, and the information didn't flood in unless I was looking for it, opening up and paying close attention, usually one or two senses at a time.

But those spikes, the ones that came with the headaches--it was like all the stimulation in the world was coming in on all channels. I couldn't ignore anything, and it was all too loud and too bright and too fetid--as though you'd been listening to a tiny whisper and somebody screamed in your ear, except it was continual. I couldn't get used to the screaming.

As bad as it seemed, though, Blair wasn't very worried. Or I thought he wasn't very worried, until he timidly suggested talking to my family about what they remembered about my senses from before. There was still a lot he didn't know, he said. It was important to cover all the angles, he said. I told him to get back to me if he heard hell had frozen over.

Then we found out that my problem definitely wasn't organic. It was "stress" related.

Blair acted like it was no big deal. Not what happened, just how I handled it. "Jim, you have more to remember than most people. Your memory can't handle everything perfectly, particularly when you're remembering what you don't want to know at all." Which, as I saw it, was the problem, not the excuse for whatever he thought the problem was. But Blair's solution to everything was to keep after me to "process" things. "Jim, the ex-girlfriend you were trying to get back together with turned out to be an assassin. You watched her die right in front of you. You're going to be upset. It's OK to be upset. Will you just talk to me?"

What did he want me to say? I couldn't bring Lila back. I couldn't say I was sorry. I couldn't help her escape from her history--hell, I couldn't even escape from mine! Talking about it wasn't going to change any of it. It was over and done, forever unsalvageable, and surely Blair was smart enough to see that without me telling him.

I missed her.

I missed the future I'd imagined with her.

I didn't know who I was, or what kind of future was possible for me.

I wanted it all to go away. Just for a while.

I found myself daydreaming about not having to hear Rafe humming in the elevator. Or having to smell Brown's aftershave. Or knowing Blair was watching me sadly. I didn't want to talk to anybody--or look at anybody, or hide my senses from anybody. I didn't want to think like a detective, or play hardball, or frisk another greasy, smelly, street hustler.

So one evening in the middle of April, I just took off. I saved the final version of the Weber file and realized that nothing left on my desk was urgent. So I took off. Almost without thinking, I stood up and did the thing that had been hovering around at the edge of my mind for days. I went to Simon's office and told him I wanted some vacation time.

He and Blair were busy. They didn't have a chance to worry or fuss or ask too many questions, and maybe knowing that they didn't have time to stop me was part of what gave me the courage to do it.

I just needed to get away. But how would I explain? Get away from what? Shooting people. Getting shot at. Facts and testimony. But that was all my job, and I loved my job, didn't I? I was good at it, wasn't I? So what was this running away crap?

Getting away from my friends? But they were good people, reliable coworkers. I cared about them, enjoyed their company, trusted them. So what was there to run away from?

I couldn't explain, so I didn't. I just needed some space, some time. To not be doing what I was doing, to not talk to anybody, to not have anybody worried about me.

Imagine my surprise when Blair and Simon showed up the next morning in Clayton Falls.

I didn't quite know how to take it. On the one hand, the two people who knew me best in the world, cared about me enough to come running after me in the middle of the night, with no warning, _after_ sorting out Simon's income taxes. How could you ask for more loyalty, more support, than that?

On the other hand, they thought I needed them to. The two people who knew me best in the world had raced out after me because they were convinced that I needed a babysitter. What the hell did they think I was going to do? Zone out on a pretty rock and stand like a statue in the woods until I starved to death or my bladder exploded? Or were they worried that I was so messed up at the moment that I might do myself some kind of _deliberate_ harm? Jeez! How insulting is that! My two best friends thought I was crazy enough to run off by myself and eat my gun. Thanks a lot.

But how could I call them on having so little faith in me when the signals I had been sending for weeks so clearly said "trouble," even to myself. After all, my emotional state _was_ bad enough to bring me out to the middle of nowhere, seeking relief.

So I tried to explain and send them on their way without rejecting them. "Look, get your tails out from between your legs, huh? I love you. I don't want you to go away mad. Let's go have a bite to eat and we'll talk about it--and then you can hit the road. OK?"

We didn't get to talk about it. We didn't even make it through breakfast before everything went to hell. There was a mysterious illness that seemed almost completely incapacitating. The US Army showed up, claiming it wasn't just a natural plague, but a bioweapons accident: quarantine, martial law, and cover-up. We were in the middle of a disaster.

Bioweapons. Blair wasn't either as surprised or as outraged as I would have expected. In some respects he was very jaded. The morning crept on, townspeople were carried one at a time into a big hospital tent the army had set up across from the diner.

Then Blair got sick. He collapsed in my arms, sweating and shaking and smelling so scared. Blair, my God. He smelled more of fear than of desperate illness, but it could only be a matter of time. Pretending otherwise would only be lying to myself. "Wildfire," they said. "Hot zone," they said. If there _were_ a cure, they would have said that, too.

I had to give him to the people who had created this evil. There was nobody else who could help him. I had to give him to them, and watch as they carried him away.

The revelations about what was really going on should have been a relief: there was no superbug. These men were not army. The quarantine wasn't so much martial law as a kind of stationary kidnapping. It was all just a plot to grab some money.

I wanted to kill them.

More than wanting to kill them, I wanted to get Sandburg away from them.

I took him out of the "hospital" tent, all the while cataloging the charges against the perpetrators of this highly organized crime. Kidnapping, certainly. Illegal firearms. Carrying firearms during the commission of a felony. Reckless endangerment--the nasty little bacteria they were using might have no serious or lasting effects on healthy adults, but on the elderly? Kids? Somebody who was sick? Assault. Conspiracy. Obstruction of a public roadway. I didn't know how exactly you would charge someone for tampering with a public water supply, but I was sure there was a law against it somewhere. Impersonation of federal officials. Robbery.

I'd been to prison. It was a terrible place. They deserved to go there.

They were trying to rob a special Treasury Department train. We managed to stop them--eventually, after screwing up once. We couldn't stop them from taking the train and cleaning it out, but we stopped them from getting away. Simon managed to contact help. In ninety minutes the place was crawling with state police and rescue workers and Treasury men.

By four that afternoon, Simon and Blair were on the way home. I...still didn't feel quite right about Clayton Falls. I stayed in town until the next morning, keeping my eyes on this second round of "helpful" outsiders, the press, the miserable but recovering locals. But by the next morning, I told myself things were settling down. I said my goodbyes and headed out to the campgrounds by the river to go fishing. Which was, after all, my original plan.

I managed to last two days. Almost.

It was stupid, really. Stupid. _This_ was what I wanted, some time alone, outside, away from the city. Space to think. Nobody asking me how I was, no cases, no endless echo of footsteps up and down the halls of the PD.

This was what I wanted.

I was miserable. Mostly, it was the nightmares. All night, I'd see Blair being carried into that tent, the sounds of him muffled by canvas and the hiss and rattle of machinery. All night I'd try to get to him, and fail. I woke each morning hearing him call for me and trying to tell myself that he was safe in Cascade, with Simon.

My God, if I couldn't trust him with Simon, where would he be safe?

But the dreams came Friday night and Saturday night, and by Sunday morning I was a nervous wreck. I told myself he was fine, he was home, there was nothing to worry about. I told myself that the bacteria wasn't that dangerous, that nobody had even been hospitalized, that I was being silly.

But then I remembered that with all the excitement of the disaster, I hadn't had a chance to finish reassuring Blair and Simon that everything was all right, that I was sane, that as far as I was concerned, my relationship with both of them was good. The last time Blair and I had had a chance to really talk, he had offered to move out. To give me more space. Because that was what he thought I wanted. I hadn't had a chance to tell him not to.

I was packed and on the road by seven-thirty.

If I was lucky, there would still be time to explain.

When I got home almost four hours later, I left the luggage and equipment in the truck and headed straight for the stairs. Blair would be there. He would be fine. We could unpack the truck later.

Just inside the stairwell I paused, listening for him. He was there, and he sounded fine. I tried to take the stairs slowly, suddenly embarrassed by my panic. Of course, he was there. Of course he hadn't gotten into trouble or done something rash. He was Blair. I'd been stupid.

As I pushed open the door he sat up and peered blearily at me from over the arm of the couch. The stack of papers on his stomach slid on to the floor and spread out in a fan. I glanced at the piles of books on the coffee table, the dirty dishes piled in the sink, and said mildly, "This place is a sty."

"Um. Yeah." He rubbed his head. "I know. Good thing my roommate won't be home for about two more days or I'd really be in trouble."

"I hear he's a hardass."

"Oh, yeah. A real monster."

Slowly I took off my jacket while Sandburg retrieved the scattered papers and set them in a sloppy pile on the couch beside him. I sighed. "Chief, we need to talk."

His eyes widened worriedly. I cleared the papers off the sofa and sat down beside him. Now that I was here, I hardly knew where to begin. It had all seemed so obvious when I was asleep, but now-- "You feeling better?"

"Yeah, Jim. I'm fine." He paused, and when I didn't continue, added, "Look, if this is about the kitchen--"

I shook my head.

"OKaaaay."

"Blair, this wasn't about--me not wanting you around."

"Yeah, I get that."

"Because, I, I _don't_ want you to--go anywhere. I'm--I like working with you. I know what you've done for me. And I'm sorry if you thought.... I shouldn't have ditched you like that."

"Jim. Hey. Easy." He put a hand on my arm. "I get it. I really do. You just needed to get away for a little while. It's totally cool." He smiled. "If anybody should apologize, it should be me. I mean, the whole stalker gig was way out of line. I'm really sorry."

I swallowed. "What was up with that, by the way? I mean, what did you think was going on?"

"Well--you're not always real good at asking for help, Jim. I wasn't sure you weren't trying to get my attention."

"Oh. Oh." He'd been worrying about me. Which I'd known, but--it was kind of a surprise, to encounter in practice the fact that he couldn't always read my mind. He probably hadn't gotten a lot of sleep Wednesday night, what with fixing Simon's computer and packing and driving down those windy roads in the dark. "Blair--I. You know I didn't want you to go away, right? I didn't want anything to-- _happen_ to you? You know that."

He was looking at me hard. "Jim? What is this about?" I couldn't answer him. I could remember those nightmares with perfect clarity, just like I could remember the reality of Blair being carried away from me. "Oh. Hell. I think I get it. You ask for a few days off by yourself, you tell me to leave you alone--and then, bam! The Universe threatens to take me out of the picture entirely! Shit. That's one heck of a punishment for asking for a week off, Jim."

I closed my eyes.

"How is this working? If you don't want me right there in your face twenty-four/seven, that somehow indicates you don't appreciate me, and so I get taken away?"

I couldn't answer him.

"Jim--listen." He squeezed my arm. "You have a right to some privacy, to some peace and quiet, to your own space. That's not a crime. It's not even a mortal insult. You have a right to set your own boundaries, Jim!"

I nodded tightly, hearing him but not quite understanding except that I had been granted some kind of reprieve.

"You didn't do anything wrong. God, that must have been really hellish on you, thinking that I was.... But Jim, I'm not going to come down on you for taking a little time alone, and the Universe isn't going to punish you for it. It's--it's a good thing, being alone. I should have understood."

I opened my eyes. "Are you OK?" I whispered.

He nodded.

I took his head in my hands and pulled him close enough that I could bury my face behind his left ear. I smelled him, warm, musky, moderately clean. He still smelled a little sick to me. "You need to drink some more water," I said.

"Sure, Jim," he whispered.

I breathed in again, indulging myself in this certain proof that Blair was here and mostly well and not angry.

Then his smell changed. I knew the smell of his desire well--it was so common. It rose from him like a sweet mist as his heart sped up. Abashed, I pulled away. I had not meant to do that; I had only wanted the smell of him. Embarrassed, Blair would not meet my eyes. I could tell he was hoping I somehow hadn't noticed.

I stood up. "Come on," I said. "Let's clean the kitchen before your ogre of a roommate gets home."

(To be continued. Really.)

* * *


End file.
